


Everything, Act II

by FasterPuddyTat



Series: Gall, Vitriol, and Wine: An Incomplete History [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Custom Hawke (Dragon Age), Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, I Will Go Down With This Ship, Non-Canon Relationship, Not Canon Compliant, Purple Hawke (Dragon Age), Rogue Hawke (Dragon Age), So many OCs, Unreliable Narrator, idiots to lovers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:27:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 42,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FasterPuddyTat/pseuds/FasterPuddyTat
Summary: Act Two.Varric's tale continues as he spins all the crap he and Hawke endured into gold.The Seeker finds herself more dazzled than she had anticipated.Smut, as always, is marked with an asterisk and indicated in the chapter notes.Missed the first act? Find ithere.
Relationships: Female Hawke/Varric Tethras
Series: Gall, Vitriol, and Wine: An Incomplete History [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1617364
Comments: 159
Kudos: 61





	1. The Best Tavern in All of Kirkwall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Barely-there smut toward the end of the chapter. From "She shivered under him, sparking a flame he’d thought thoroughly quenched" to "She would leave before long, chased by the phantom of their past."

Varric was tired. 

No, scratch that. Varric was exhausted. Drained. Stick a fork in him, he was _done._

The Seeker’s goons had moved his stone chair to catch the sun as it shifted with the season, and his eyes were still spotty with its harsh glare. After several hours of squinting he tried telling the story with his eyes closed, but the Seeker hadn’t appreciated his new tack. It was just as well. His eyelids weren’t much use against the sunshine, and he wove a better tale when he could see her reaction to it. She’d kept him all day, throwing a hard baton of stale bread at him when he had the nerve to mention the hunger knotting his guts late that afternoon. 

Something must have softened her after she released him for the night. The boy had come round with a thick chop and potatoes that melted like butter in his mouth. No ale this time. They must have gotten tired of throwing it out every morning. Varric inspected the water in its elegant cut-glass goblet. He’d glossed over so much of their story, first in the book, now for the Chantry. The words were cold and hard, a cut-glass Champion for a cut-glass audience. He preferred the version that curled around his chest and kept him warm with its soft weight, the one that kept him steadfast with its hidden vulnerability. He wrinkled his nose at the water goblet, grateful the Seeker liked pretty things that made sense. It played right into his strengths.

…

Rain came down in sheets, battering the ‘Man’s door as the wind whipped through and chased soaked vagabonds into the tavern’s warm, musty welcome. Varric glanced up to note another pair of galeswept sailors blown in by the spring squall as Fenris dealt the next hand.

They all threw a coin on the table. Varric swirled his wine and let his impression of their first impressions settle around him. Gallard was rearranging the cards with still, sure fingers. He had something he liked. Hawke stifled a yawn, which meant she had at least a pair but probably better. ‘Bela was already looking through her stash, so he could safely count her out. Fenris looked bored. He’d been looking bored more often these days, rather than broody. Varric wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. He glanced down at his own hand. Songs of Autumn and Twilight, Knights of Ages and Sacrifice, and the Angel of Death. He laid the Knights on the table, drew one, and checked.

His neck tickled. He drew the top edge of his nail over it as he looked around the table. Hawke raised a brow at him. He scowled at her. Her lips parted in muted surprise, and he groaned inwardly. The neck scratch. He was at her mercy.

“Leading with a pair, Tethras?” Gallard asked. “Bold. Dangerous.” The elf grinned. 

“At least I have a pair to lead with, old half-a-sack,” Varric replied with a wink.

Gallard hissed. “Low blow, old man.”

“Not as low as that Antivan cutpurse,” Hawke said, “or was it a Rivaini hedge witch? I forget which story you told last.” She tossed a handful of copper onto the table with a clatter. “Twenty shiny ones. Your move, ‘Bela.”

‘Bela sighed, heaving her barely contained bosom into the forefront of everyone’s mind. Varric watched her slip a card from the strap at her hip into her hand and mate it with one of the disappointing five she’d been dealt. She dropped another handful of copper into the pot and fluttered her lashes at Gallard.

He hummed as he pushed two neat stacks of copper into the pot, then winked at ‘Bela and added a silver. She bit her lip at him, all smoky promises and glittering steel. Varric chuckled. She was going to murder that elf one of these days. Fenris glowered at all of them. He rested his fingers lightly on his coin, but his play was interrupted by the door swinging open and the shout of a crier cutting through the tavern.

“Lady Hawke! Is there a Lady Hawke in the building?”

Varric studied the man over his cards. Human, Hightown, tall and slender and cringing from the noise and stink of the Hanged Man even as his mustache and bedraggled uniform dripped storm water into a growing pool at his soft, ruined shoes. Half the patrons raised their voices in reply.

“Never heard of her.” 

Bless them. 

“Lady Hawke! I have an urgent message from—”

Edwina turned to him. “Oi, you deaf? Order somethin’ from the bar or bugger off!” 

The messenger’s mustache slithered farther down his thin lips to see her, but he had the air of a washed-up paper pusher on his final warning and not even the professional wrath of the meanest barmaid in Kirkwall would stall him. Varric almost felt sorry for the guy.

“From the Viscount! Lady Hawke, your presence is requested—”

Six burly longshoremen rose from the table nearest the door, their eyes trained on the interloper. The messenger let out a squawk of such absolute indignity it would haunt him to his dying day, and he fled back into the storm. A sealed parchment fluttered to the gritty puddle he’d left. One of the men brought it over to them as the door swung closed.

“Thanks, precious,” Hawke said as he handed it to her. 

“Hightown bastards,” the man grumbled, “teach them to come after one of our own.”

“You only like me because I buy you drinks,” she said, grinning as she shook the wet parchment out.

He grinned back, gleaming teeth in his dark, handsome face. “And you only like me ‘cause I’m pretty.”

‘Bela swatted at his ass. He caught her wrist, or rather, she allowed herself to be caught. 

“Your friends are missing you, Jackie love,” she said as he released her.

Jackie Love ran a hand over his bald head and returned to his table. Hawke broke the seal with a chuckle and a snick of her knife and settled onto her elbows to read the summons that had cost the messenger his dignity, his boots, and quite possibly the seat of his trousers. Mace’s nap had been disturbed by the shouting and she sat at Hawke’s side, leaning heavily on her mistress as she was drawn into whatever sob story the Viscount was selling this time. Hawke scratched the mabari’s ruff absently, chewing her lip and making Varric wish very much they were alone in his suite. He tugged at his pants.

“Anything good?” he asked, casual.

Hawke folded the parchment with a groan. “Some grave matter of mortal importance that only I, an absolute nobody, am capable of handling.”

“Sounds fun,” ‘Bela said with a smirk.

Hawke scoffed. “Sure it does. Your name isn’t the one in fancy lettering with seven, seven! Seven looping flourishes below it.”

“Seven?” Varric chuckled. “You’re deep in it now, Hawke. The Viscount only uses seven flourishes for hostile armies, famine, and plagues.” Hawke raised a brow. “No.”

“Yep. His Ultimate Horniness has requested an official meeting with yours truly.” She sighed. “I _had_ to be cheeky with the Arishok.”

“To be fair to the Arishok, that is your signature move for a reason,” Varric said.

Fenris grunted. “You were effective in battle, you demanded what you were owed and no more, and you didn’t lie to him. You’re probably the only person in Kirkwall the Qun allows him to deal with.”

Hawke slumped onto the table and Mace, sensing that her scritches were at an end, laid back down at her feet with a grumble. Fenris made his play, seeing to the exact copper. Varric saw as well. Hawke lifted her head long enough to chuck two silvers into the pot, nearly doubling the bet. She rolled one green eye to look his way. Varric raised a brow at her. She tucked the corner of her lips into a secret smile, fleeting and just for him. The tiny hairs at the back of his neck tingled. 

‘Bela set a pair down, drew two, and raised again. She had to be bluffing. Varric bit his tongue. Normally he’d have called her out, but with Hawke leading the charge he was content to fall in step. Gallard rubbed his ear and eyed his silver, weighing his hand against the coins he’d part with, and all those he’d put in before. He saw. Varric noted it, keeping all his surprise inner. Either his old friend had a better hand than he should, or he’d finally wised up and weaponized his tells. Fenris folded with a muttered curse.

Varric looked at his cards, the Songs tucked against the web of his thumb and forefinger, the Angel of Temerity, the Angel of Death. He drew. His fingers tightened for just a moment on the card, not his favorite on most days, but Maker’s chapped ass, he’d take it tonight. He raised the bet, pushing ten silver coins into the pot.

Hawke kicked him under the table. He didn’t let it show. She laid three cards down, Serpents of Avarice, Decay, and Sadness. Varric winced as she drew two, saw his bet, and raised it another two silver. She looked at ‘Bela, pure challenge in her dancing eyes. ‘Bela folded with a huff and palmed another card as she leaned back against her chair, flicking one of her delicate black locs between her fingers. Gallard rubbed his ear. He laid the Knights of Roses and Mercy down, drew, and raised. Twenty coins clattered into the pot. 

The air around the table stiffened. Varric cleared his throat of it as the others turned to see what he would do. The skin around Hawke’s eyes was tight. She was panicking, though he honestly didn’t know why. She was rich. He was rich. What was this small pile of silver to two of the wealthiest families in Kirkwall? He bit his cheek to keep from smiling. It wasn’t the coin. Hawke just didn’t like to lose. He laid his Songs down, drew two, and stopped. The Dagger stared up at him, its serpents seeming almost to slither around the blade in his shock. It should have been two cards above, in Gallard’s hand. He glanced up in time to see the elf’s eyes crinkled in laughter. Shit. That absolute bastard.

Varric set two neat stacks of ten silver into the pot, then flicked in a sovereign. Gallard’s gloating expression froze. Varric looked blandly at his old friend. It was a decent attempt, but when one comes for the king, one cannot miss. Hawke drew her fifth and threw two sovereigns down, cool nonchalance not quite covering the small tremble in her fingers. Gallard laid out a pair of serpents and drew one with shaking hands. He leaned back, worrying his ear like a dog with fleas. He counted his coins, then counted them again. He glanced at Hawke and Varric, one studying her nails, the other absently swirling his wine. He dropped two sovereigns into the pot.

Varric set his wine to the side and moved in for the kill. He slid the knight that had come with the Dagger below the two on the table and drew his final card. Another serpent, not that it mattered. He leaned forward to lay his cards out, but the back of his hand connected sharply with his goblet. 

All eyes darted to the sound of rings on glass. Varric swapped his new card and the Angel of Death with one hand as he caught his wine with the other. Four suspicious faces turned to him. He gave them his best, most handsome, most charming smile, and laid his cards on the table. ‘Bela crowed with laughter when she saw the Angel of Death. Gallard stood abruptly, knocking the stool down behind him as he threw his partial hand on the table. Varric winced. A pair of angels stared forlornly at the ceiling alongside a lonesome knight. It would have been a decent hand at most tables. Varric almost felt guilty, but then he remembered the high-grade fuckery with the Dagger and didn’t feel a lick of it.

“You dirty, conniving—” Gallard rounded on him.

Varric shrugged. “Hey now. Conniving I’ll take, but I bathed just this morning.”

Hawke cleared her throat, the mabari once again sitting at attention, watching them with interest. 

“Gentlemen, do you need to take it outside? Please do, ‘cause it’s the only thing leaving this table with you.” 

She laid her cards down. The other two Songs, Knights of Compassion and Dawn, and a serpent. Gallard scoffed. Varric shook his head at her, grinning. She swept the pile to her chest, mouth open in gleeful victory. ‘Bela stood and stretched, looking for all the world like a half-tame panther in the low firelight. Gallard tore his eyes away to shrug into his coat, his shoulders hunched against the Rivaini’s warmth. Varric's lips pulled into a small frown. Seemed their little tryst had ended a bit sooner than the grizzled elf would have liked. Varric might have warned him, but as usual, no one had asked for his good advice.

“I have an appointment at the Anchor,” ‘Bela announced to the table. “Fenris, be a dear and escort your delicate flower through the mean streets of Lowtown.”

Fenris snorted. “My delicate flower? Did someone invite Anders and not tell me?” He craned his neck to look behind her, letting his gaze skate lightly over her behind. She wiggled it. He rolled his eyes. “I’ll walk with you to Hightown, but you’re on your own in that awful tavern. Human nobles think if they wear enough perfume no one can smell their rot. They’re wrong.”

Gallard had drifted to the door as they flirted, examining it closely as he eavesdropped. The rain had stopped sometime during their game and the ‘Man was beginning to empty, the roughnecks and sailors who woke with the dawn falling victim to the rhythm of their days. Hawke caught Gallard’s eye with a tip of her head. He flipped her off fondly and pushed out into the night. ‘Bela glanced down to her.

“Not joining us?” she asked, a knowing cast to her raised brow.

Hawke motioned to her half-full ale. “Can’t go wasting good bitter. Stir up some trouble at the Anchor for me.”

‘Bela nodded slowly, unconvinced. Fenris cleared his throat, and she took the arm he’d decidedly not offered to lead him through the door as well. Hawke watched them go before narrowing her focus to smirk at Varric over her pile of ill-gotten coin. He set the untasted wine aside to lean on the table and flick through the latest addition to their wealth. She swatted him away.

“Half of that’s mine,” he said.

“Sure, the silver half,” she replied, flicking a coin at him. 

He caught it and clipped it down to the table. She leaned back against her chair and took a long draught of her ale as he divided their take into piles, one to keep the Coterie from shaking down the clinic, another to pay off the gardeners in Hightown when Merrill went a’wandering, and two other piles, much smaller, for Hawke and himself. Hawke plucked the only sovereign from her share and stood, Mace at her side.

“Gonna settle up with Corff,” she said, hesitation in her cadence.

“Nightcap upstairs?” Varric asked, reading the intent in her rhythm.

She smiled in response. He felt a strange pull at his throat, a strange warmth in his gut. Strange still, even after so many months. He tilted his head to the bar and returned to the coin on the table when she left, sweeping it into small purses that jingled brightly at his hip. Hawke’s high, clear laugh made him glance to the bar. Her back was to him, Corff’s broad, honest face smiling in response to whatever had drawn that lovely sound from her. Varric dropped a dagger back into the sheath at his thigh and jogged slowly up the stairs to his rooms.

…

Varric slid from the chair, set the cover back over the bones and grease on the plate, and pushed heavily up onto the bed. He shimmied out of his trousers to bury himself into the bedsheets, tucking his arm beneath the crushed pillow to bolster its pitiful shape. As the bed warmed around him, he warmed himself in her memory.

…

Hawke looked at him from her pillow, cheeks flushed and chest damp with sweat. He loved to watch her like this, boneless and spent, her eyes soft and sleepy, her lips faintly swollen from his kiss. He stroked her hair and kissed her again, just because he could. She ran a finger under the heavy chain at his neck, muted curiosity peeking through the sated languor of her body.

“Why the hardware, Varric?”

He lifted his free shoulder and let it drop. “When our father died, Bartrand got the house, the seat at the Merchant’s Guild, the clan ring, and the hopes and ambitions of House Tethras. I got his favorite necklace.” Hawke frowned. “It was the better end of the deal, believe me,” he said with a soft smile. 

Hawke sighed. “I can’t imagine,” she said. “I tried to be a lady, and I nearly hanged myself on it. You wear your titles like they weigh less than nothing.” She slid her fingers under the chain and up to his neck, running her thumb along the stubble at his jaw. “How do you hold them so lightly?” 

Mace whimpered in her sleep. He rolled to his back to stare at the ceiling. Hawke’s fingers trailed down to rest over his heart. 

“It’s different when you’re born to it,” he said. “What were your early lessons, reading, writing? Arithmetic?” She tilted her head. “Mine were similar, but not the same. Reading weakness, writing ledgers, counting favors. Bartrand set me up with my first account for my ninth birthday, and we discovered I had a talent for secrets at twelve.”

Hawke shook her head. “Maker, I was still playing wardens and darkspawn at nine. Twelve, though…” 

She glanced down to the scars that crossed her honey dark skin. Varric rolled to his side and drew his fingers over them, tracing their tiny ridges and smooth planes. She shivered under him, sparking a flame he’d thought thoroughly quenched. He shifted again to settle between her long, long legs. She drew them up along his side and he followed, sheathing himself in a single stroke. 

He looked down at her, sable hair a wing on her pillow, lips parted with desire, those green eyes dark with intent. They were of a height like this, the everyday imbalance righted by the plane of his bed. He dropped to her lips to lose himself there, to draw the night on to its breaking point. She would leave before long, chased by the phantom of their past. He always made sure she had a litany of reasons to return.

“Come with me to the Keep tomorrow?” she asked as she pulled her woolens on.

Varric propped himself on his elbow to watch her dress. He wasn’t the type to deal in certainties, but he was pretty sure he’d never tire of watching her shimmy into (and out of) those leathers. She saw him watching and gave an extra bounce to the process.

“I’m meeting with the Tascior deshyr in the morning, having luncheon with my seconds, then attending to my correspondence in the afternoon. I’m booked solid.”

She threw a sock at him. He batted it to the side, but not before he got a noseful of foot sweat and sandalwood soap. Damn, he needed to have his laundry done.

“I’ll pick you up after breakfast.” She flipped her daggers into the sheaths at her back.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, mentally shuffling the letters he really did need to write into smaller groups.

Hawke stuffed her gauntlets into her pack and turned back to him. He raked his eyes down her, fearless. She stalked over the red coverlet to hover over him, predatory and possessive. He lowered himself down and she followed, dark hair curtaining their faces as she kissed him soundly. The words clamored at the tip of his tongue, _stay, you’re safe, please._ He dipped his chin away from her, swallowing them down as he broke the kiss. She twinged the corner of her mouth in a sad smile, dropped a peck to the bridge of his broken nose, and left with Mace at her heels.

Varric counted slowly to a hundred, and when he was sure she was well on her way, he stood and shrugged into his robe, its black silk gliding over him as he stretched his sweetly aching body. He took a thick sheaf of vellum from his desk, uncapped his ink, and sat down with his favorite quill in hand. The blank page stared up, taunting him. He breached the oily surface of the ink with the stained tip of the quill and set his first smooth marks down.

_Swords and Shields vol. 4: Rogues, Lookouts and Lovers, and Other Things That Go Bump in the Night._

It wasn’t poetry, but it was good enough for a work in progress.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Wicked Grace scene is a tribute to Varric's short story [here.](https://dragonage.fandom.com/wiki/Varric_\(short_story\))


	2. The World that Hungers

Light from Thedas’s lesser moon washed through the narrow window and gave a ghostly shape to the space that confined him. Varric sat up with a shaky breath, quelling the frisson of panic that trembled his fingers and his lungs. Dwarves didn’t dream, but night terrors came for him all the same. He performed the ritual naming of things until he was calm, bed cover, card table, water glass, serving dome. Everything in its right place.

He laid back down and closed his eyes, struck suddenly uneasy by the weak light from the window. It gave the room an uncertain, ethereal quality, one that did nothing to ease his rattled mind. He took solace in a hard, heavy world for all that it could bruise. The moonlight shifted this reality to a place where the world didn’t bruise, but hungered. He felt himself drawn down by the insatiable will of the Fade. Dwarves couldn’t walk the Fade in dreams, but there were times when the Fade yet walked in him. 

…

“Vaaarri-ck…” 

Soft lips tickled his ear. He swatted imprecisely at the annoyance and was rewarded with a low chuckle. His bed sank under her weight. He rolled to curl around her, and was disappointed to find the hilt of a throwing knife jutting from her thigh into his soft, unprotected stomach. She shoved his shoulder lightly.

“C’mon,” she said, dropping the intimate whisper for her regular lilting delivery. “We have a house call to make.”

Varric rumbled. “What about the Viscount?”

“The Keep will keep,” she said. “Runner came from the alienage right as Mother and I sat down to breakfast. Remember the half-elf mage?” He grunted. “His mother wrote, said he hasn’t woken up in days. She’s already called Marethari, but there are places even Dalish Keepers fear to tread.”

It was too early in the morning to parse just what Hawke was on about. He pushed up around her, the leathers sliding and snagging on his bare skin. Her eyes were flat, already on the case and not even a bit interested in the mostly naked dwarf doing his level best to twine around her. He huffed. What did dwarves know about twining? He rolled from the bed and started dressing. She left to meet ‘Bela and Blondie in the tavern.

The morning was clear and cool, or it would have been, were they anywhere but Lowtown. The alienage closed in around him, the misery of its elvhen residents a living thing that bathed them in its morbid exhalations. The half-elf’s mother waited for them under the branches of a dying tree.

“You’re here! Praise Mythal, I never thought you would come so quickly.”

Hawke shrugged and laid her hand on Mace’s broad shoulders. “It’s not every day my breakfast is interrupted with news of forbidden magic being practiced in my own backyard,” she said. “Is the Keeper inside?”

The elvhen mother nodded and led them to her threadbare dwelling, tidy and dim. The three humans hunched slightly to avoid cracking their heads on the low ceiling while The Keeper regarded them with her huge, solemn eyes.

“Thank you for coming. Feynriel is trapped in the Fade, and I fear we must use an ancient and dangerous magic to free him. Is there anything you would know before we begin?”

“Oh we eat danger for lunch, but one thing does spring to mind,” Hawke said. “Why are we here, and not in your camp with him?”

“We will use his childhood home as an anchor for the ritual. It will give him a greater sense of safety to help free his mind from the demons. As his power grew in his time with us, it became clear that he is something we haven’t seen in an age.” She paused here, closing her eyes and taking a breath. “He is a dreamer, one who can enter and shape the Fade at will.” She reopened her eyes to peer into Hawke’s. “His incredible power draws the strongest of demons to him, so be wary, and choose your companions well. All will be tempted.”

“I never give in to temptation,” ‘Bela purred with a grin. 

“Usually because you’re leaping to it with open arms,” Hawke replied, turning from the Keeper’s intense stare with a soft laugh.

The Keeper looked to the boy’s mother. “Arianni, please leave us. We have much to prepare.”

“Oh, ah… yes of course.” She turned her wide, frightened eyes to Hawke. “You’ve done so much for us already. Know that no matter what happens, I will be forever grateful for your willingness to help us.”

Her hands covered her trembling lips and she slipped through the door. As it closed, Varric caught a last glimpse of her as she fell to her knees at the roots of their sacred tree. He grunted softly and turned his ear back to Hawke and the Keeper.

“There is more, Hawke, but I would not have his mother hear it. You cannot let Feynriel become an abomination. The damage a dreamer abomination would wreak would be immeasurable. If you cannot free him, you must kill him—”

“Keeper I can’t—”

“It will not kill him in the world. He would become what your people call ‘Tranquil.’ If you cannot convince him to turn away from the demons with words, you must with force.”

Hawke chewed her lip. “I will not let him become a danger to us.”

It wasn’t exactly an agreement. The Keeper hummed quietly and turned to the others. 

“Are these the companions you would take to the world of dreams?”

Hawke regarded them. Anders squared his shoulders, meeting her eyes.

“You will need someone who understands the Fade. Justice and I will act as your guide.”

Hawke nodded, mild amusement sparkling in her eyes at his stoutness. She raised a brow at the Rivaini. 

‘Bela’s grin faltered slightly, but she recovered well enough. “Frolicking through dreams? Sounds fun. Count me in.”

Hawke’s gaze fell to Varric. He swallowed. The Keeper’s warning about temptation rang in his head as she studied him, waiting for an answer. He was her trusty dwarf, always at her side. But there were hidden desires, nursed grudges, secret urges he kept from her, even from himself. What would the demons see? What would they draw from him as they struggled against her? He met her eyes. They were confused by his silence, hurt by his indecision already. Shit.

“Don’t know how much use I’ll be, Hawke, but I’m willing.”

Relief broke over her like the dawn. He tried to warm himself in it, but fear had already wrapped its icy claws around his chest. Mace watched him, those coffee dark eyes nearly level with his own. He forced his lips into a smile, and even though Hawke saw the lie in them, she accepted it. It was the best either of them could do. She turned back to the Keeper. Mace didn’t, and instead fixed him with those big brown eyes, ever watchful. A small part of him rebelled against the dog’s tenacious mistrust. He crossed his arms and glared back.

“We’re ready. Begin your ritual.”

Marethari bowed her head and waved to the four elvhen bedrolls spread on the clean swept stone of Arianni’s small home. Varric broke away from his staring contest to unclip Bianca and lay gingerly down onto the coarse brown cloth. He tucked his arms beneath his head, but the Keeper frowned. She knelt at his side to pull them down, folding his hands over his belly. He squirmed, uncomfortable and unlikely to fall asleep in such a position. She looked down on all of them, and, satisfied, raised her hands in supplication and began a slow, musical chant. 

He blinked. The close, hewn timber walls of Feynriel’s childhood home had been replaced by hard white stone, dwarven architecture, human proportions. The Keep. Why were they in the Keep? Hawke stopped at his side, wary and close, Mace at her other hand. Justice wasted no time in coming to the fore, shining his bright blue light from Anders’ eyes and the cracks in his skin. Varric winced. Usually he had the luxury of forgetting that his second favorite apostate was an abomination. No such luck today.

“So,” Varric said, breaking the tense quiet with a careful hand, “this is the Fade. Doesn’t look so different.”

“Do not be fooled,” Justice said with Anders’ mouth, “things lurk here that see to the depths of your soul, and they will not hesitate to use your darkest desires against us.”

“Well that’s comforting,” Varric said, “any more pointers before we get going?”

“Only this. Trust nothing you see, hear, or feel. This place will work to deceive all of us, and those who think themselves immune to its will are easiest to sway.”

“Let’s go,” Hawke said, her words echoing off the cold stone for all that they were said quietly. 

They passed through strange halls, edges fuzzy and warped, corners filled with unsettling green mist. Hawke opened a door to find objects careening about the room like a flock of crazed birds, books that flapped their covers like wings, scrolls unwinding themselves as ghostly voices whispered their secrets. She closed the door. Waves of distinctly unpleasant shivers gripped Varric as he tried to make sense of what he’d just seen. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets.

“Is this what you people do at night?” he asked.

“This is the general idea, yeah,” Hawke said.

“My dreams usually have more strangers and fewer clothes,” ‘Bela said with a grin. 

“I hear the boy,” Justice said. “He is weakening. Hawke, we have little time to waste.”

They came to an open area, a place Varric would usually describe as a courtyard, though no courtyard he’d ever seen had its trees floating several feet above the ground, their roots trailing strange Fade soil along his skin. He brushed it off and watched it dissolve into nothingness. A demon waited for them on the lower level of the place, watching and hungry.

“Well…” its voice was slow, rotted, dead things caught in the rocks at low tide. Varric gritted his teeth. “It is rare to see two forgotten magics in one day. The Fade is usually a slow place, not many surprises.”

Hawke shrugged and spread her hands. “Surprii-ise,” she said, grinning. 

Varric drew Bianca, stroking the fine grain of her stock to center himself. Lethargy rolled from the demon in waves, seeping into his nerves, slowing his reflexes. He kicked his heels hard into the stone, leaning into the shock of it to break free. It didn’t work nearly as well as he’d hoped.

“Mm,” the demon said, “I wasn’t sure I’d like this one, but it has… potential.”

Justice turned to Hawke. “A demon of sloth. It exists to make men forget their purpose and pride. Do not relax around it!”

“Call me Torpor,” the sloth demon continued, “I have a proposition that might interest you.”

Hawke’s grin turned feral. “As I do for you,” she said, drawing her daggers.

She stepped into shadow as ‘Bela leapt down onto it from above. Varric stroked the fire rune on Bianca and let fly, bolts hissing as they sank into the demon’s black form three at a time. Justice crackled with power and unleashed a storm of lighting, stunning the sloth demon as well as the shades that had joined the fight. Mace jumped onto a shade as it tried to flank him, growling as she ripped tattered cloth and pulsing ichor. 

Hawke reappeared behind the thing that called itself Torpor and plunged both blades deep into its chest. It loosed a low, grating wail as it slumped to the floor, leaving behind a pool of such utter blackness Varric’s stomach twisted to look on it. Mace shook her head when the last shade fell and trotted up to Hawke, tongue lolling happily from her mouth. Hawke scratched behind her ears.

“Well, one demon down, how bad can the others be?”

Justice turned from her to walk up the stairs. “Be not rash,” he rumbled, “that was a scavenger, weak. It needed you. The others will not.”

“Right,” Varric said as they followed him, “good pep talk, Smiley.”

Hawke led them through another door, down another hall, but when they tried to follow her through a second door at the other end, a blue light flashed before them and a barrier appeared from the air. Mace paced before it, whining.

“This isn’t the demon’s work,” Justice said, laying a hand on it. “Feynriel has closed the way to us. We must trust in Hawke, as he trusts her.”

‘Bela huffed and crossed her arms. “Well this isn’t quite what I’d envisioned when I agreed to crash a teenager’s dreams,” she said. “Where are all the nubile young women? Why did he choose the Keep of all places, when the Rose is just around the corner?”

Varric laughed. “Is that why you came with us, Rivaini? Is that what your dreams were like when you were young?”

She grinned. “They’re still like that, Varric. Pity you’ll never know the unfettered joy of a good wet dream. Some of them stick around for days.”

“Silence,” Justice boomed. “The barrier is weakening.”

Sure enough, they felt themselves pulled through the door to see the boy fleeing from a towering desire demon. Mace bolted to Hawke’s side as she turned to them. 

“Sure, leave me to deal with visions and madness,” Hawke said, her voice cheerful and false. “I don’t mind at all.”

Mace sat at her mistress’s side and leaned heavily into her, breath flapping her jowls as she watched Hawke’s companions with a possessive gleam in her eyes. Varric swallowed.

“You take away my pets,” the demon purred, sickly sweet venom in its voice, “I’ll take one of yours.”

Varric steeled his heart. He waited for her to mention the crossbow at his back, the woman who’d shaped both it and him for so long. He pushed her golden hair forward, the constellation of pale scars on pale skin. _Here she is,_ he thought fiercely, _try me, and see what dwarves are made of._ He felt the demon caress his mind, felt it weigh his offering with its clawed fingers. Then he felt her leave. He blinked, confused. 

The demon turned to Isabela. “Would your pirate queen stay, if open waters beckoned?”

No. He watched ‘Bela’s eyelids droop with sensuous abandon as the demon pulled her greatest desire from her, a ship, men to command, freedom for the taking. Hawke groaned and gave him a sideways grin. She crossed her arms and jutted her chin at ‘Bela.

“Shall I turn around now so you can stab me in the back? Or would you like it to be a surprise?”

‘Bela turned to her, sleepy and utterly seduced. “Oh, Hawke,” she moaned, “you are just the sweetest.”

Hawke rolled her eyes and vanished. Justice froze both pirate and demon with a sweep of his staff as Varric jumped back, pulling Bianca forward. The demon broke free first. Varric pinned it to the weird softness of Fade stone and sent a bolt deep into its eye. It flailed at the wood, its obscene breasts heaving as black blood gurgled around the white fletching. Mace threw herself onto its scaled, writhing form and tore out its throat. Hawke reappeared and struck ‘Bela across the temple just as the ice fell from her form. The Rivaini fell to the floor, limp and horrible. Hawke slumped to her knees as Mace trotted over to lean her massive bulk against her. ‘Bela faded from sight.

“How many more demons, Justice?” she asked, weary.

“Only one,” he said, “but its power is overwhelming even from here.” The spirit stepped forward and laid a cracked hand on her shoulder. “Do not hold her betrayal in your heart, human. She could no more resist the demon than she could take wing and fly.”

Hawke nodded and pushed heavily to her feet. Varric clipped Bianca to his back, his mind whirling with uncertainty. Why hadn’t the demon chosen him, when his desires were still so raw? He’d spent years in thrall to them, tested the outer limits of patience and decency, risked his life again and again, and ‘Bela gave in… for a boat? He’d have to have a serious talk with her when they got out of there.

Shades attacked as they crossed to the other side of the Keep. Hawke drew them together in a sweeping, striking dance. Justice froze them as they drew near her, and Varric sent a hail of bolts into the room. They shattered in a most satisfying way.

Once again the blue barrier separated them from Hawke as she passed through the second door. Mace sat before it, stiff with impatience. Varric brought Bianca forward to inspect her. 

“You were surprised the desire demon did not choose you,” Justice said.

“Huh. Was it that obvious, big blue?”

“You have grown beyond that which you offered.” 

Varric narrowed his eyes at the spirit possessing his friend. “What did you see, demon?”

“I saw what you brandished in fear, dwarf. It was polished and perfect, held in tenderness and regret. It had no power over you.”

The barrier fell. Once again the elf boy was running away as Hawke stared down a massive demon, this one five times the size of the last. Power rolled from its jagged form, weakening his knees and twisting his guts. Mace raised her hackles and charged forward, two hundred pounds of fanged fury. Hawke held out her hand and the dog stopped, snarling at her side.

“How dare you interfere,” the demon said. Its voice was smooth and persuasive, utterly different than the others. “With my power joined to his, we could have changed the world.”

Hawke shook her head and peered up at it. “Have you ever seen an abomination?” Her voice, light and lovely, filled with laughter even here. “They are ug-ly.”

Varric rasped a laugh even as his chest constricted with the unnatural air in his lungs. He felt more than saw the demon turn to him. 

“You put such stock in appearances? Perhaps that is why your friends’ loyalty only runs skin deep.” 

Cold tendrils wrapped around his mind, twisting every horror they’d met in the deep and breathing new life into them. The idol. The demon found the idol in his memories and its song burst into his mind, sweet and intoxicating, compelling him to answer, to obey. Red haze tinged his sight.

“Doesn’t it rankle, making your brother the hero of your own story, dwarf?”

Varric fought. He knew. He’d seen what happened to Isabela, turned easily as a leaf in the wind. Bartrand wasn’t a hero. Bartrand had betrayed his blood, his house, his very name. The idol’s song rose in him once again, commanding, cajoling, drawing him into its burning embrace.

“Bartrand…” His tongue was thick in his mouth, stupid and slow. “Bartrand wasn’t the hero. He betrayed us, left us for—”

“He left with the treasure of the ages,” the demon said, his voice rich and comely, joined to the idol’s chorus. “With my aid, you would have emerged with the glory, not tarnished silver and flesh wounds.”

Varric saw it then, Bartrand victorious, riding into a city to the adulation of a maddened crowd. The idol gleamed in his hands, vibrating with fury at being wielded by a false master. He saw himself joined to the immense power of this demon, towering over all as he drew Bartrand level with his hundred eyes and tore the lyrium idol from his greedy, grasping hands. He saw his brother fall and cry, weeping with guilt and rending his garments as he prostrated himself at their feet.

He turned to Hawke, disgusted to see her pulsing crimson and blurred to grotesque proportions. The dog at her side snarled and became monstrous, teeth and claws, raw canine intelligence gleaming from the flaming pits of her eyes. Hawke’s focus was still entirely on the demon, so confident, so weak.

“Is that all you’ve got?” she asked, that lilting voice cracking his new resolve, just a bit. There was something in it, some echo that pulled away from the crimson song swelling in him. “Join me, and you too can become a backstabbing bastard?”

The idol was a jealous mistress. It soared in him, high and sweet and inescapable. It wanted him, only him, and the demon said he could have it. He raised Bianca.

“I always did want to wipe that smirk off his face,” he said. 

Hawke finally turned to him. She looked down at Bianca, the bolt nocked and pointed directly at her heart. Her taunting grin faded as her eyes widened, understanding at last. His finger twitched toward the trigger. She blinked. Something damp left a mark along her cheek. She made no move to draw her daggers. He shifted, lifting the crossbow to those shining orbs. How dare she. The glory was _his,_ and his alone.

A huge black form blotted out the light. He felt Bianca wrenched from his hands, heard the crack of wood in massive jaws. Mace threw the shattered crossbow away from them with a derisive shake of her head. Varric drew his daggers.

“You’ve always hated me, blighted animal. Come and get your pound of flesh.”

The demon moved behind him. Hawke loosed a war cry, but he didn’t see her attack. Mace stalked him, shoulders smooth on her back, hackles stiff, teeth bared in a vicious snarl. He feinted right. The mabari leapt away lightly, taunting him. He feinted again. She didn’t move at all. It infuriated him, to be toyed with by a dumb beast. He roared a challenge and charged.

The dog met him full force. His daggers sank into her belly as her jaws closed around his neck. He heard distant shouting, the crackle of Justice’s lightning, the soft pop of a smoke bomb. The jaws tightened, choking the breath from his lungs, piercing the soft flesh, loosing a spray of warm blood as first one, then another vessel ruptured. Mace shook him like a ragdoll even as he twisted the daggers harder into her, and then, all was black.

“Hawke!” 

His shout was ragged, breathless from a torn throat. He raised a hand to it, surprised to feel smooth skin and solid muscle. His eyes darted from corner to corner, adrift in the dim light.

“You too, Varric?”

He whirled to the sound. Isabela lounged uncomfortably on the table, eyes cast down and shoulders heavy with guilt. The memory crashed in on him, relentless. Mace rose with a snarl and scrabbled to her feet to stand at attention over her mistress’s sleeping form, those brown eyes protective and accusing. He clutched his neck with a strangled gasp and fled.

…

The guard’s knock roused him from his dark thoughts. 

“It’s open,” he called, not bothering to raise his head from the pillow.

The door swung in and he heard the serving boy’s soft footfalls cross to his table. The supper plate was cleared away with a muted ring of metal on porcelain, and moments later the scent of hot coffee wafted to him.

“The Seeker will call on you after breakfast,” the boy said.

“Thanks, Nipper,” he grunted from his place on the bed. He felt a twinge of guilt, but better for the boy to think him merely tired than raw and aching from old wounds. He heard clothing rustle in a short bow, and the door closed once more. 

He sat up when the bar fell and looked over his breakfast. Dark toast, butter, a crock of jam, another thick slice of bacon. He went to the table, poured the coffee, and studied the rise and curl of steam once he’d arranged himself in the nearby chair. It pulled him back to that horrible day. The writer’s curse, he thought with a huff, to remember the bad times so perfectly.

…

Isabela came by with Bianca a bit later. She set the crossbow carefully at its spot on the wall and glanced at him before settling her gaze in his fire. 

“Hawke asked where you were when she woke up,” she said. “I told her you had some pressing business to attend to. Figured that was close enough to the truth when she just nodded and went to talk with the boy’s mother.”

Varric grunted. “Is she… was she…”

“Angry with us?” He nodded. She shrugged. “Disappointed. We turned on her, Varric. Her closest friends.” ‘Bela hugged herself, ridden by guilt. “She said not to worry about it, that the Fade is tricky like that… that she blamed herself for taking us at all.” Varric leaned on the table, hands over his face. “I told her that was a stupid thing to think, but she just shook her head and smiled that way she does when her heart is breaking.”

Varric let his hands fall. “Thanks, ‘Bela,” he said, “for bringing Bianca back. I’ll check in on her later, but I really do need to write these letters.”

Isabela turned her reddened eyes to him. “Don’t wait too long, Varric. Not again.”

Guilt speared him. “I’ll see her tonight, Isabela. I swear it.”

That satisfied her. She left him to his papers and his remorse. He picked up his quill and dipped it into the ink. The flow of deepest black onto the dull golden parchment soothed his raw edges as it always did. He wrote to his cousins in Wycome, his contact in Orzammar, to the bard somewhere in Antiva. He wrote a dozen more letters and each one calmed him farther, until he looked up to realize full night had fallen, and he was nearing the point of no return. He corked the ink, rinsed his quill, and scattered drying dust over the final letter. He went to Hawke.

“Bodahn. Leandra?” 

No one had answered the bellpull, and no one had come to the door when he knocked. He let himself in, picking the lock and making a note to tell Hawke to get better locks. The house was dark and quiet, and the thick silence prickled the back of his neck. He softened his step and moved farther inside, hating to steal in like a thief in the night but too wary and too worried to do otherwise.

A soft glow came from the balcony. He crept up the stairs keeping close to the banister, ears sharp and eyes open for intruders. Well, other intruders. Whispered words slithered down to him, all sibilants and no sense. He crept closer. Anders was talking to someone in Hawke’s room.

“…lungs are damaged. She breathed a lot of the gas in and they began filling with water in response. They’re clear now, but she needs rest. That puncture in her lower left abdomen is resisting… watch her. I need to check on my clinic, but I can return before dawn.”

He set Bianca down to slide along the wall, and stopped just before he reached her door.

“Oh, you’re sweet to worry over little old me.” Hawke, sounding like she was on the edge of an abyss. His stomach twisted. “I just need a nap is all. One good solid night of rest and I’ll be right as rain.”

“Anders said two days, Saoirse, and not one moment sooner.” Leandra, sounding every bit as concerned as he felt. 

What had happened? Was this the result of the Viscount’s summons? Maker damn him for a coward, he should have been there for her. Cloth rustled and he pictured Anders rising to his feet, slow and exhausted. He needed to announce his presence, preferably before it was discovered. He slid back down the wall, hooking a finger in Bianca as he went by. He reached the top of the stairs and called out.

“Hawke? Bodahn? Is anyone home?”

Anders’ lanky form blotted out the light from Hawke’s room.

“Varric? What are you doing here?”

“Could ask you the same, Blondie. What happened? Where are Bodahn and Sandal? Is Hawke…” 

“Slow down. I’m here because Hawke fell while she fought half a dozen crazed men in a poisoned square. Bodahn has gone to the apothecary for steaming herbs, and Sandal is in their rooms by the kitchen, studying a sample of the gas that poisoned her.” His shoulders sagged. “Hawke… is outwardly in good spirits.” Varric felt Anders’ eyes boring into him. “She’s not upset about the Fade, Varric. But… you hurt her when you left. She woke with your name in her mouth.”

“Varric?” Hawke’s voice, thin and reedy. His gut clenched. “Anders, is that Varric out there?” Anders turned his face half to her with a nod. “Well send him in already. I have a bone to pick with that dwarf.”

Anders turned to his side and let the light hit Varric, who took a deep breath and made his feet shuffle forward, feeling horribly like an unruly child being brought before his betters. Hawke was propped up on her bed, cheeks pale and drawn, shoulders bare, bandages wrapped around her chest and upper arm. Mace slept soundly at the foot of her bed and Leandra sat at her side, worry creasing her lovely face. Hawke squeezed her hand and flitted her eyes to the door.

“Go rest, Mother. Varric can watch me ‘til Anders comes back,” she said with a small cough. She lanced him with a knowing gaze. “It’s the least he can do.”

Leandra rose stiffly from the chair and brushed at the deep wrinkles set into her lavender gown. She placed a soft hand on Varric’s shoulder as she passed to join Anders in the hall, a scent of orange blossoms in her wake.

“Close the door, Mother?” Leandra turned, brow raised. Hawke smiled. “Please.”

The elder Hawke sighed, but she did pull the door closed behind her. The latch caught, and they were alone. Varric shuffled his feet again. 

“Pretty wild day, hey Varric?” Hawke’s voice was low and raspy. Varric’s throat ached in sympathy.

“Hawke I’m—”

“No. Don’t.” 

She lifted a hand to him. He crossed to Leandra’s chair, giving the sleeping dog a wide berth, and pushed it back to kneel at Hawke’s side. Her fingers rested on his cheek. He leaned into them and met her eyes.

“Let me say it, Hawke.” She shook her head slowly, stroking his cheek with her thumb. “Please.” His voice broke, just a bit.

“I never should have taken you to the Fade, Varric. You had no defense against it.”

“Don’t…” he shook his head. “You’re not allowed to take the blame for this one. That’s mine, and I’m not sharing.” Her lips pulled in the ghost of a smile. He turned his head to place a kiss in her palm. “I would have killed you, Hawke. You, Mace, Anders, and who knows how many others, for an idol that’s probably on the other side of Thedas by now.”

Her smile tipped down. “The idol? That’s what the demon used against you?” He nodded. She looked away, deep in thought. “I wondered. There was this… red haze, swirling around you. I thought it had come from the demon, but when I looked closer, after Mace had… it seemed like it was coming from inside you.” She shivered. “What _was_ that thing.”

“I have no idea,” he said, “but I wanted it real bad.”

Hawke scoffed. “Understatement of the year.” 

Varric took her hand to kiss her scarred knuckles. “How can I make it up to you?”

She studied him, faint amusement in her tired eyes. “Impossible dwarf. Have you forgotten I was raised by a mage? One of the first lessons I learned was what happens in the Fade, stays in the Fade.” She turned her wrist to lace their fingers together. “It took me by surprise, that’s all. I’d hoped… I’d hoped that the demons wouldn’t notice you, being a dwarf and all. Stupid of me, really. Dwarf or not, they sensed my weakness. Can’t even blame them. It’s their nature.”

Varric tilted his head. “Your weakness?”

“I nearly let you kill me, Varric. If it weren’t for Mace, you would have.”

Visions flashed before his eyes, Hawke in Bianca’s crosshairs, Mace’s jaws blotting out the light. He squeezed them shut, willing the images away. She tightened her fingers in his.

“These dreams, these… nightmares. Do they always linger?”

“They can,” she said. “Some of them for days, first in vivid flashback, then a vague sense of unease, a pall over your day, or your week.”

“Sodding ancestors,” he murmured. “How do you stand it?”

“Some of us don’t,” she said. 

He opened his eyes to meet hers, serious and sad. She tugged gently, drawing him closer. He rose to sit by her, over her. She glanced up to Bianca’s stock leaning over his shoulder, then raised a brow at him. He stood swiftly, cursing himself for a thick-brained fool as he unclipped the crossbow and set it on her table. 

“And the rest,” she said with a grin.

He chuckled, low and relieved as he loosed the harness and shrugged out of his heavy duster. He returned to her when he was soft in his silks. She cut her eyes to the empty swath of bed next to her, an invitation. He accepted, grateful but still wary of the slumbering beast at her feet.

“What’s wrong with Mace?” he asked as he settled into the crimson sheets.

“Long day,” Hawke said. “She took in more of the poison than any of us, being lower to the ground. Anders spelled her to sleep. She won’t wake ‘til late tomorrow morning, poor thing.”

“Think she… ah…” his hand went to his neck

“Worried she’s holding a grudge?” Hawke nudged him with her unhurt shoulder. “She likes you, Varric.” He snorted. She took his hand to play with his fingers, pressing the tips, watching as they curved back. “She lasted a bit longer in the Fade than you, but she was too injured to fight. She stayed by your side until you woke, snarling at anything that came near.” 

Varric shivered. “I’m not sure I’ll ever forget the feel of her jaws at my throat,” he murmured. 

“I can’t help you there, but I am glad she’ll make you think twice before stabbing me in the back again,” she said, grinning.

“Hawke, please. You know I would never choose a demon over you while conscious and sober.”

“So, less than half the time we’re together. That’s not as comforting as you think.”

He huffed and grabbed her hand, stroking its back with a gentle thumb. She met his eyes, laughing in spite of her exhaustion. He searched for the right words, but there weren’t any. He kissed her instead, slow and tender. She shook him from her fingers to cup his jaw and draw him closer, and closer still until he had to shift his weight over her. He broke away, wary of injuring her further.

“Hawke,” gentle rebuke in his tone, “you’re hurt.”

She released him with a sigh. He shifted back to her side, closer than before. She laid her head on his shoulder and breathed deeply. He did the same, filling his lungs with lilac and leather oil. She slept before long, her head growing limp and heavy on him as she gave in to the demands of her battered body at last. He eased her down on the bed, then cupped her prone, trusting form with his. His breath followed hers, slow and measured, and blessed, dreamless sleep soon claimed him. 

Dawn crept into the room with its golden fingers, and Varric woke with a start. Voices murmured outside the door, Leandra, and a deeper voice, more muffled for its lower register. He glanced at Hawke, still sleeping, and rolled carefully from the bed. He crouched at the door to press his ear to the silk-smooth wood. 

“She’s unwell,” Leandra said, her voice thick with sleep. “You’ll have to call again later.”

“But she promised,” the man, a posh Starkhaven accent. The royal. Varric rolled his eyes. “Do all Hawkes break their promises so easily?”

Maferath’s balls, Varric wanted to punch his voice in the face. He started dressing as they went on, too low to understand, but Leandra’s tone grew stronger as he shimmied into his trousers, and she was nearly shouting by the time he clipped Bianca into her harness. He spared one last glance at Hawke, still sleeping, and slipped through the door.

“My family is dead!” the man said as Varric came to the balcony. “What would you have me do?”

Varric leaned over the low wall to see him better. He was tall, a few inches taller even than Hawke, and both his skin and hair were a burnished mahogany against the blinding white of his armor. Varric cleared his throat. The man whirled to see him, and his thin, Southern features narrowed in his dark face.

“What is this?” the prince demanded, “Where did you come from? Who are you?”

Leandra caught Varric’s eye with a sharp cutting motion, but he elected to ignore it.

“Varric Tethras, deshyr of House Tethras and personal friend to the ladies Hawke.” He swept a mocking bow. “And you are?”

The prince drew himself up. “Prince Sebastian Vael of Starkhaven. I engaged your _personal_ friend in a grave matter of state security, but now she lies abed rather than fulfilling her end of our agreement. I would know why, and I would know now.”

Varric put his hands on the polished oak banister. “State security, hm?” His delivery was smooth, casual. “Starkhaven, you say?” He pitched the question for maximum contempt. The prince nearly vibrated with offense. “Last I heard, Starkhaven was settling into a new era of openness and prosperity now that the ah, rather conservative ruling family is out of the picture.” 

“You dare… my family was murdered!”

“My condolences, serah, but I still fail to see what that has to do with my friends or the security of Starkhaven which, as I said, seems to be doing quite well without you. Is it… justice, you’re after? Against a company of mercenaries? Or is it more precise to call it revenge? And, is this how your family ruled, barging into noble homes before breakfast to harass their occupants?” 

Varric let the disdain ooze from his words. Leandra threw her hands in the air with a huff and stalked into the study. The prince stilled, letting the words sink in slowly.

“Revenge… that’s what the grand cleric said.” His clenched fists relaxed. “You have given me much to pray over, dwarf. Lady Hawke?” Leandra came to the door. “My apologies for my short temper. I will be in the Chantry, should your daughter still wish to speak with me.”

He turned to Varric to give a precise, shallow bow, and strode from the room, his heels striking the floor so hard Varric wondered if it had insulted him as well. Varric relaxed when he heard the front door close behind him. Leandra looked up at him from her place in the study’s door frame, though he couldn’t quite read her expression.

“What an agreeable young man,” Varric said lightly.

Leandra huffed. “I should have known better than involve myself in Starkhaven’s affairs. Dreadful place, always Maker this and Andraste that.” She sighed. “Is my daughter sleeping?”

“She was,” Varric said, “though I’d be surprised if that’s still true. We made enough noise to wake the dead.”

“I’ll have Bodahn start breakfast,” she said. “Do you take coffee or tea?”

“Coffee, if you have it. Black.”

“I do. And Varric?” He leaned on the banister. She lowered her voice. “We would be lost without you. Saoirse would be lost without you. I know she won’t tell you, that’s just her way, but…” she glanced behind him. He looked over his shoulder as well. The door was still shut tight. “She cares for you. More than that… I’ve never seen her this way with anyone.” Varric’s ears burned. Leandra put her fingertips to her mouth, weighing her next words carefully. “Don’t waste time, Varric.” Those grey eyes bored into his. “Don’t waste any more time.”

She nodded once, dismissing him, and crossed to the hall that led to the kitchens. He turned back to Hawke’s door, shaken and off balance from calling one bluff and having his called in return. Hawke’s bright green gaze greeted him when he stepped into her room, sharp and alert as ever.

“My hero,” she said, sing-song.

Varric chuckled. “At your service, m’lady.”

She lifted her hand. He laid Bianca on the table and took it, pressing a kiss to her fingers. She pulled sharply, and he caught himself on her pillows just before crashing full into her. Mace grumbled at the foot of the bed. They stopped, Varric twisting to watch the great beast stretch her bulk across the mattress and relax into a deeper sleep. 

“You both need your beauty rest,” he said with a grin. 

Hawke pulled him down to kiss him soundly. “Beauty rest is no good to me if there’s no one around to admire the results,” she said when he broke away.

He nuzzled her neck, making her laugh. Maker’s breath, he loved that sound. She laced fingers through his hair and pulled back gently. He rose up to look on her.

“You’ll always have me, Hawke,” he said, his voice oddly rough. She blinked, eyes suddenly bright with hope. He stroked her cheek with a callused thumb. “Always.”


	3. Business as Usual

“Kitten, I can see every card in your hand.”

Daisy jumped a bit, lifting her cards back out of sight. She looked up for reassurance. ‘Bela winked at her. Pleased, she snuggled down into her chair to beam at everyone seated around the table. Leandra slid a tall stack of silver into the pot.

“Raise three,” her voice smooth and utterly without affect. 

Varric marveled at her perfect delivery. Hawke laid a thematic pair down and drew. She stifled a laugh.

“Mother, I apologize for every time I disappointed you.”

Leandra raised an elegant brow. “It’s so bad you feel the need for a clean slate?”

Hawke laid her hand out. Donnic set his cards on the table, folded his hands over them, then laid his forehead atop them all. ‘Bela tossed hers near the few coins remaining to her while Daisy watched with her huge eyes.

“Oh! The card of death kills the round. Now, do I lay my cards face up, or down?”

Varric tapped his hand into a neat stack and put them on the discard pile. “You don’t have to show your hand unless it beats Hawke’s,” he said.

“What if… you don’t know?”

‘Bela whispered what they all knew already. Daisy scattered her hand lightly on the table, looking a bit wilted. All eyes turned to Leandra, who was looking very prim. She opened her mouth to speak, but shouting from the foyer interrupted her.

“Haaawke!” 

Five burly dwarves bristling with steel strode into the room with Bodahn trailing behind. 

“I’m sorry, mistress Hawke, I tried to stop them,” he said, panting.

Hawke swept the pot to her chest and rose swiftly, spreading her arms in welcome. “Gentlemen, you’re just in time! Deal them in, Donnic, I’m going to fetch more refreshments.” She tapped her chin. “What do you boys take, ale? Spirits? And I’m afraid all we have to eat is a platter of whist nibbles, but Mother’s spread is the stuff of legend.”

The Carta enforcers looked at each other, jaws slack with confusion. Varric hid a grin behind his goblet.

“Er…” the leader recovered quickly, smoothing his black beard with a steady hand. “Most of us take whiskey, but Delar here likes Antivan white, if you have it.”

Hawke’s smile shone on them, loosening their shoulders and softening their guard. “Four whiskeys and a goblet of white, coming up.” She focused on the one the leader had indicated. “Delar?” The sandy-haired dwarf nodded. “Chilled okay?” A hesitant smile crept across his pockmarked cheeks, and he nodded again. 

She left them with a smile and patted her thigh. Mace stood up and stretched, making all five of their newest friends take a step back. The mabari paid them no mind as she followed her mistress into the kitchens.

Leandra stood and turned to Bodahn. “Thank you for showing them in, messere Feddic. Come with me to fetch chairs for our new guests?”

Bodahn gaped for a moment, but he caught up quickly enough. They disappeared down the stairs to the cellar. The Carta dwarves spoke quietly among themselves in a lingo-heavy patter. Varric listened in, grateful he’d learned the company cant when he was new in the secrets trade. 

“This en’t on the baker’s cup,” a shorn dwarf with shortswords at his hip muttered. Varric named him Stub.

“Fig moss din’t say chaff about slingin’ cut with the mark,” the red-haired archer agreed. Ember, Varric decided.

“Moss sent us for cowed loin, yeah?” The leader, sharper than most. Professor. “More’n one way to cut that, an’ this way I don’t gotta shadow the clearing when one of you nug slappers eats steel.” 

The biggest bruiser drew his mace and hit it in his palm. All brawn and no brains, likely the worst hitch in Prof’s giddyup. Beady yellow eyes studied the table of unarmored, unarmed card players from under his shelf of a brow, and his enormous beard lay like a stuffed bear cub across his chest, braided and banded with jeweled brass. Knuckles, Varric decided.

“Why pass a dance when the loin’s so tender an’ free?” Knuckles asked. “Me, I prefer it bloody.”

Prof stepped right up into his face. Knuckles looked down on him, belligerent.

“Fig moss tickled me, yeah? Call yea or flatten, pup.”

Knuckles’ frown deepened, but the others all gave him varying degrees of discouragement. Hawke returned carrying a laden tray just as the heavy mace fell back into the loop at Knuckles’ side. She waved them over to the table, setting the tray down and pulling her chair closer to Varric’s to make room for them.

“Where’s Mace?” Varric whispered as she settled near him.

Leandra and Bodahn made a commotion when they returned, the Carta enforcers clanking and creaking as they each took a chair and set up around the table. Hawke took advantage of the noise.

“Halfway to the Keep by now. Sent her for Aveline with a quick note. Guard should be here before long.”

Varric chuckled deep in his chest and turned to sweep his new cards from the table. They played two hands before the Guard showed up, blunting the cutthroat nature of their game while they shared the table with professional cutthroats. 

“We play every Tuesday!” Hawke called as the dwarves were led away in manacles. 

Prof and Delar flicked a brief thumbs up behind their backs. Varric shook his head. The Carta would spring their people by the end of the next day, and their weekly game of Grace had just grown by at least two.

Donnic’s shoulders slumped with relief. “Maker’s breath, Hawke, I thought we were done for.”

Hawke smiled at him. “Your ruse fit perfectly, Guardsman. They never suspected you.” 

“I’ll leave rusing to the professionals from now on,” he said as he stood. “It’s been another exceedingly pleasant evening, peculiar surprises aside. Ladies, gentleman,” he said with a bow.

Merrill stifled a yawn. ‘Bela put an arm around her shoulders and tucked her head against her. 

“Let’s get you home, kitten,” ‘Bela said. She glanced at Varric. He tilted his head in the smallest negative. She rose slowly, coaxing Daisy from her seat. “Up up up, that’s it”

She pulled Daisy gently to her feet and they left as well, leaning on each other. Leandra took in the mess of her table, dirty cups and crumbs in the carved wood. She sighed.

“Bodahn?” He came to a sleepy attention. “Arrange for the maids to come a day early.” He nodded. She turned to Hawke and Varric. “Saoirse…” she pursed her lips in a pleasant moue. “You keep the most… interesting company.” She smiled. “Never a dull moment in our family. Goodnight, my love.” She glanced at Varric, keen. “And goodnight to you, Varric, deshyr and personal friend to the ladies Hawke.”

He put a hand to his chest and dipped a shallow bow. Leandra left them to drift quietly to her chambers. He turned to Hawke.

“Did you lose to Prof on purpose, or did you really not see the card in his sleeve?”

She grinned. “Mother spent all afternoon bending my ear about the trouble Gamlen brought down on his head with his latest get rich quick scheme. I’d been expecting something to come of it, but five Carta bruisers? I bet he shit his pants.”

Varric laughed, picturing Gamlen falling back and stuttering as he invoked the family name. Hawke nudged him.

“Nightcap upstairs?” she asked, tilting her head toward her chambers.

He slipped from his chair to follow her, grateful to be spared both the long walk back to Lowtown and the cold welcome of his empty bed.

He woke with a start. It was once more that odd hour, not late or early but somehow both. He dressed slowly, quietly so as not to wake her. The fear dredged him from sleep every night, but with her by his side, its claws couldn’t find purchase. Still, it served as a convenient alarm on the nights he spent in her house, just early enough to slip down the stairs, through the cellar and out to Blondie’s clinic, where a low cot tucked away in a lamplit corner waited for him.

He shrugged into his duster and buckled the harness, clipping Bianca in with a silent thump against his back. He glanced over his shoulder for one last look at Hawke, her dark hair in a tangle on his pillow. His pillow. When had that happened? He smiled and stepped out.

The clinic was busy that night, babies crying, the stink of blood. Anders hovered over an old man in the center cot, the one with the best light, who was moaning in pain. Varric shrugged out of his armor and went to a haggard girl holding a squalling bundle. He held out his hands.

“Here, Fiona. Let me hold him a while.”

She gave him the baby with shaking arms and slumped gratefully onto her cot. Varric held the child to his chest and walked his circuit around the clinic, humming a low lullaby. The babe was ten pounds of righteous fury, angry at the heat, angry at the cold, insulted by his hunger, bewildered with the night. Varric knew what that was like. His hand wrapped around the tiny bottom, patting gently in time with his steps. After a while, the babe quieted. He pressed his small, soft cheek against Varric’s shoulder and wiggled under the open buttons of his tunic.

“Get comfy, y’little stinker,” he said with a smile, and walked another circuit to be sure the babe was sleeping soundly before tucking him gently into his sister’s arms.

Anders had finished with the wounded man and was sitting at his desk, scribbling. The other children had cried themselves to sleep, only a soft whimper here and there as the quill scratched over cheap parchment. Blondie looked up when he felt Varric’s eyes on him. He shook his head once and went back to his charts. Varric retired to his cot. He fell asleep the moment his head touched the dusty pillow.

…

Varric eyed the bottle, wax uncracked, gold leaf on the label. He turned back to the narrow window, bracing himself in the chill air that slipped around its imperfectly mortared edges. Drink was the last thing he needed tonight. The Seeker should have kept it for herself after their little session that day. He’d bet five sovereigns she regretted demanding the truth by the time he was done. Not that he’d given it to her. Ancestors, he could barely tell the truth to himself, and he’d lived it.

Light from the twin moons of Thedas held him in thrall. They’d been in this exact alignment on that horrible night, only the lesser had been red in a rare eclipse. Varric wasn’t one for portents, but some coincidences felt more intentional than they had any right to. He leaned on the cold stone and stared through dead vines as they swirled over the rooftops of Hightown, and as he watched, they conjured the images he’d tried so hard to erase.

…

Varric blew across the surface of his coffee. His Hightown second crossed his arms and glared at him with tired, bloodshot eyes. Not a morning person, it seemed.

“How is it,” Varric asked his surly kinsman, “that five Carta enforcers can prance through all of Kirkwall with the Hawke name on their lips, and I only hear about it after they’ve battered down my friend’s ancestral door?”

The dwarf shook his braided beard at him. “Trouble started in Lowtown, yeah? Take it up with Nakita.”

Varric took a careful sip. “I did take it up with Nakita,” he said, watching as the dwarf before him flicked a nervous rhythm between his finger and thumb. “She showed me her copy of the note her best runner brought to Hightown, and your reply.”

“Copies aren’t shit.”

“Nakita always keeps her receipts, friend. What happened to your grand plans to alert Bodahn through the servant’s entrance?”

“Got jumped,” he said, thinking just a bit too slowly.

“Mmhm,” Varric set his still too hot coffee down. “Jumped by the thought the Carta would take care of your little brother problem?”

The man’s hands balled into fists. “Don’t know what you’re on about.”

Nakita’s long, lean form unfurled from the shadows. She slipped a dagger through the dwarf’s rich brown beard to press on his throat. Varric unrolled a tattered parchment. 

“Master Tethras,” He raised a brow at the man. “Master. That has a nice ring to it. Why did you never call me master?”

The beard quivered. “Where did you get that?”

“I have my ways.” Varric continued reading. “Master Tethras, your useless little dirt farmer of a brother continues to drag your House through the filth. Return to Kirkwall and assume your rightful place, both in the Guild and in our district. The Merchant families will pale before your greatness once more. Yours in deathless fealty, unswerving loyalty…” he rolled the parchment. “And so on.” He looked back at the traitor in his room. “Where’s Bartrand.”

The dwarf sputtered. “I don’t know! Swear on my ancestors, I don’t know!”

Nakita flicked her blade forward, shearing half the beard away in one stroke. A heavy gold band clattered to the floor. Varric leveled Bianca at his chest.

“Think harder, friend. An honest answer will make this quick. More lies…” 

He nodded to Nakita. She tore the rest of the beard away and the dwarf flinched. Bright blood trickled down his exposed skin.

“Here!” Varric furrowed his brow. The traitor swallowed painfully. “Swear. Swear by the Stone. He’s here, full retinue of guards and servants! You’ll never get past them, though. Spare me! I’ll take—”

Nakita stepped away with a look of disgust. Varric pulled the trigger twice, a bolt in the heart, a bolt in the eye. The dying dwarf slumped to the side, bleeding out onto the well-kept wooden floor. Varric stood and clipped Bianca into her harness. 

“That explains the flurry of action Reitt caught last week,” he said. “Whole slew of favors were called in with our old contacts. This guy sat on ‘em, so Reitt went hunting.”

Nakita tilted her head toward the body. “What are we going to do with him?” she asked in her deep, seldom-heard voice. 

“Are you happy in Lowtown?” he countered.

She raised a brow at him. “Happy is relative, but don’t go thinking Hightown is a promotion, _master_.”

He laughed. “Okay okay, I have an idea for Hightown, and it even includes cleanup.” He tossed her a heavy purse. “Good work today, m’lady. Keep this up, and I’ll be in your debt before long.”

She leaned down to press a smoky kiss to his cheek. “You saved my life in more ways than one, Varric. I’ll be in touch.”

She slipped through the door, all flaming red hair and milk pale skin. How she disappeared into the shadows of Lowtown looking like that was anyone’s guess. He shook his head, trying to settle his thoughts. The stink of blood filled his nose as he stepped over the swiftly cooling body of his former employee, but he barely noticed it. 

Bartrand had returned.

Hawke needed to know.

“Oi, Red,” he called as he walked down into the tavern.

The boy turned, surprised at being noticed. The kid didn’t have a black eye for once, that was promising.

“M-messere Tethras? What can I, er, what… brings you here?”

“I live here, kid. Have you found steady work yet?” Red shook his head. “Want some?” He simply stared. Varric groaned inwardly. He was setting himself up for a mountain of work, but… “Take care of the mess in my room, then report to Reitt in Guild square.” The kid blinked slowly. “You know Reitt?” He nodded. “He’ll show you the ropes.” Varric tilted his head toward the stairs. “It’s not gonna smell any better if you wait. Ask Norah for the good cleaners.”

Red jumped from his stool, knocking it backward and tangling his foot in a leg. He shook free and bolted to the cellar stairs. Varric turned to the door. Damn, he hoped Hawke was in.

Hawke was not in. Some business on the coast, and for once she hadn’t dragged him along. 

“I’m so sorry, messere,” Bodahn said, obsequious. “She said she’d be home around luncheon, but you know how she is.” Bodahn’s eyes widened. “Not that I think it’s bad that she’s that way, no, far from it—”

Varric chuckled. “We all know how Hawke is, including Hawke.” Bodahn’s worried smile returned. “Anders is my next stop. Mind if I cut through?”

Bodahn waved him inside. Leandra was also away, and the urge to steal a few minutes alone in Hawke’s chambers was nearly overwhelming. He might kick off his boots and lie on the velvet cover, or roll to the side and fill his lungs with lilac and sweet bay. Or maybe he would sit at her desk and fill a page of her journal with filthy musings and rhyming verse in praise of her curves and planes, the only idol that could ever bring him to his knees. 

The idol. Bartrand. He made for the cellar stairs.

Anders presided over a quiet clinic, quill scratching on parchment, a rare smile on his lips. He was writing to Bethany. Varric wondered how Ferelden was treating her. He cleared his throat. Anders looked up and his smile faded.

“Varric? What can I do for you?”

“Writing to Sunshine?”

Anders nodded. “They’re on the move again. She wouldn’t say where, only that it was in the mountains.”

“Better her than me,” Varric said with a shudder.

Anders sighed. “Did you need something? I would like to get this out before evening.”

Varric rubbed his brow. “I did. Word on the street is Bartrand’s back in town…”

“And you need me for what, revenge?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. He left you to die in that cursed thaig, too.”

“But we didn’t die, Varric. Quite the opposite.” He looked back to his letter. “You’re on your own for this. I prefer saving lives, not ending them.”

Varric hesitated. “Sunshine would still be here if he hadn’t betrayed us. You can finally tell him how it makes you feel.”

Anders stilled. “We don’t know that,” he said softly.

“What about Hawke?” Varric’s voice lowered, his best, most persuasive tone. “What is she gonna do when she finds out?”

“Perhaps you shouldn’t tell her,” Anders said.

“Ha! You think she won’t figure it out on her own? Listen, Blondie, I haven’t been on the business end of those daggers so far, and I plan on keeping it that way.”

Anders groaned. “Fine. Fine! But only to keep Hawke from going there alone.” He set the quill in his inkpot. “Was she home?”

Varric shook his head. “She had business on the Coast, took the elves and ‘Bela.”

“She’s learning,” Anders said, picking the quill up again.

“Yeah. Guess she got tired of hearing me complain about sand in my trousers.” 

Varric smiled through the twinge of sadness at being uninvited. He would have said no the first two times, but the third time she asked, he always said yes. His smile twitched. He’d have to start with yes next time. Anders watched him.

“Well keep an ear tilted upstairs for me,” Varric said. “I have a few other people to see before we pin that bastard to the wall and shake him til the stuffing falls out.”

Anders nodded once and returned to his letter. Varric walked back through Darktown, picking through his drop points and letting himself be seen. His Hightown contact’s betrayal stung. Best to let the others know that Varric Tethras wasn’t going anywhere.


	4. Song of the Idol

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Light above the waist smut. From "See anything you like?" to "He released her with a groan."
> 
> CW 2: A dip into horror here with Bartrand's return. I dug into the worst parts of it a bit deeper than the game goes, and took some creative license with Bartrand himself.

Varric made his way back to the Hawke estate with the dull orange rays of a setting sun over his shoulder. Merrill wandered lightly behind him, cooing at the new green shoots poking up through cracks in the flagstones and the dark red buds that covered the otherwise bare branches of Hightown’s caged trees. She tied one end of her string to the tree nearest the Lowtown steps and veered away, drawn by the siren’s call of the Garden. Varric scoffed quietly to see her go. 

He checked in with Red and Reitt, the first eager as a puppy and the second about to throttle both of them. 

He slipped a small purse to Reitt. “Training expenses,” he murmured, “treat you and the missus to something nice while you’re working overtime.”

The short, stout human pocketed the coin with a good-natured grumble and ran a hand through his wheaten hair. “Boy’s an eejit,” he said, “but he’s an honest eejit. He can read and write a damn sight better’n yours truly, so that’s a blessing.”

Varric clapped the man on the shoulder, a shoulder only a handspan or so higher than his. He wondered for a moment if Reitt wasn’t half dwarf. Maker knew he could nearly pass for one. Varric dismissed the thought. All human, most likely. Seemed they came in as many shapes and sizes as there _were_ shapes and sizes.

“Good man. Keep a weather eye on the Garden?”

Reitt grunted. “Your Dandelion at it again?”

“Daisy, and yeah she is.”

Reitt nodded and turned to leave, waving to Red to follow him. Varric shoved his hands into his pockets and walked on to the Hawke estate with a muttered curse. They were losing the light. He quickened his stride.

Bodahn answered the door, more out of sorts than even he usually was. Varric smiled at his stammering and let himself in, only to stop short the moment he stepped out of the foyer. A young elf stood near the great hearth, shoulders drawn and eyes downcast. Varric gave her a fleeting, clinical once-over, a slave, and hard-used judging by the way she shrank from even this small attention.

Bodahn caught up.

“Varric, meet Orana, the newest member of the Hawke household.”

Leandra sighed loudly. She was sitting at the heavy writing desk, disappointment plain on her face. “An elvhen slave… oh Hawke, what have you done?”

Hawke’s answering groan of frustration rolled over the balcony wall. 

“Love of the Maker, Mother! For the last time, she’s not a slave. I’m paying her! She’s free to go whenever and where ever she desires!”

Hawke appeared at the balcony, robe tied at her waist, hair dripping onto her shoulders. She was radiant in her ire.

“Varric?” Her brow furrowed. “What are you doing here? Did Mother invite you for supper and not tell me out of spite?”

Leandra sighed again. Varric clicked his tongue with a shake of his head.

“Much as I’d like this to be a social call…” he jutted his chin to her chambers. “Can we speak privately?”

Hawke tilted her head back to her door. Varric dipped his chin to Orana, who dropped a well-trained curtsy for all her shaking nerves. Leandra called to both of them as he climbed the stairs.

“Your new slave will have supper ready soon. Will you stay for slave soup, Varric?”

“Still not a slave, Mother,” Hawke shouted down, “but yes Orana, I wouldn’t miss it my darling.”

Varric elbowed Hawke when he was near enough. “Ixnay on the arling-day, Hawke,” he whispered, “imagine that brings up some bad memories.”

Hawke squeezed her eyes shut. “Shit. What have I done, Varric?”

Varric shrugged as he stepped into her room. “What you thought was right, I’m sure.”

Hawke closed the door behind them. Varric paged through her neat desk, a half-finished manifesto in Anders’ tight script, her journal open to a doodle. He leaned down for a closer look.

“Hawke.”

“Hm?”

“Did you let ‘Bela draw in your journal?”

“Let is overselling it a bit. She swans in while I’m out and leaves me _gifts_. Did you see what she carved into the banister?”

“They’re a bit bigger than yours.”

“Yes, that’s because they’re hers. What’s the latest artwork in my journal?”

“A wild stab at a naked dwarf. Safe to say it’s been a while since she romanced the Stone.”

Hawke joined him at the desk. His arm circled her waist as she pressed against him, smelling of sea and sky under the clean, floral damp of her hair. Her breast grazed his cheek, soft below the mauve cloth of her robe. For a moment he forgot about Bartrand, forgot about the idol, forgot even about that morning, the traitor’s dying rasp as he stepped over him. 

He pressed his cheek against the yielding flesh. Hawke turned to face him, her robe falling open to reveal almost as much skin as his tunic. She rested her hands on his shoulders, a smile playing about her lips.

“See anything you like?”

Varric hummed his appreciation as he gripped her hips in both hands to draw her full against him. He kissed the nearest scar, a jagged thing that traced the inside of her left breast, long as his little finger. 

“That one,” he murmured against her skin, his lips and breath raising gooseflesh in their wake. “And this,” he kissed another, a faint arrow pointing to her heart. He reached the edge of her robe and nudged it farther open. Some scars he remembered where she’d gotten them, others he didn’t. He had a story for every one. She let the robe fall, her fingers tightening on his shoulders as they reached a silent accord to go on. “This I like,” he said, passing over the hard nipple to trace a deep groove on the other side with his tongue. Hawke hissed through her teeth at his stubble on her sensitive skin. He trailed soft kisses back and took her dark nipple into his mouth at last, sucking gently in apology.

“Varric,” Hawke said, half a whisper, “not that I want you to stop but—” she cut off with a gasp when he moved to the other, happily exploiting their difference in height as he rolled her stiff flesh on his tongue. She caught her breath with a quiet laugh. “Was this what you wanted to talk about?”

He released her with a groan and rested his forehead on her chest. She circled her arms around his shoulders, careful of Bianca’s stock as she nestled his head below her chin. The sick, angry haze of that morning whipped itself into a war with what he and Hawke had just conjured between them. He swallowed hard and let her go. She gave him room, watchful and waiting. He looked down at the desk and traced 'Bela's dwarf, too slight of build, too long of limb. 

“Bartrand’s back in town,” he said. “Set himself up in a new place in Hightown, called in a few favors with some of his old contacts.”

Hawke’s jaw clenched. “Are you sure? He would really risk coming back to Kirkwall?”

Varric scoffed. “I think by now we both know he’d do anything for money. The information’s good.” He didn’t think it worth mentioning someone had died for it. Or, from it.

She grinned with all of her teeth. “Well, what are we waiting for? We simply must welcome him back to the neighborhood.” She pulled a dagger from Maker knew where, flipped it smartly and caught the hilt with a flourish. “We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

A knock sounded at the door. “Mistress Hawke? Messere Tethras?” Bodahn. Hawke groaned quietly. “The dowager lady Hawke requests your presence at the supper table.”

“Thank you, Bodahn,” Hawke called, “be there in a moment.” She tossed the dagger onto her bed. Varric rubbed his brow. “Supper first?” she asked with a frown.

“I’ll go charm your mother,” he said, “so she doesn’t rip you a new one when you come down dressed in your leathers and armed to the teeth.”

Hawke swept down to press a kiss to his cheek. He was quicker than she, and caught her lips with his. It was brief and blinding, a confession of hunger, a scent of salt and sun, a nip, a hum, and it was over. She straightened and took those perfect lips out of his reach with a rueful grin, cutting her eyes to the door as she went to her wardrobe. He adjusted his tunic to cover the bulge in his trousers and left for the supper table.

Supper was a quiet, strained affair. The new servant stood stiffly in a corner of the room, waiting for a sharp order or a sharp cuff. She flinched every time Mace made a sound, but the dog was utterly absorbed in slobbering over a pork knuckle in her corner, grunting and happy. The soup Orana had made was unlike anything he’d ever tasted, a thick bisque of brightest green, which she’d topped with a scattering of seared pork belly and tender white sparrowgrass.

“This is gorgeous, Orana,” Hawke said between gulping mouthfuls. “What’s the green? Garlic?”

Orana spoke to the floor. “Garlic blossoms, mistress, and ramson.”

“Ramson? But that’s a weed!” Leandra set her spoon on the table with a frown.

Hawke huffed. “I have clear memories of you sending all three of us out for ramson every spring in Ferelden, mother. You weren’t too good for it then.” She turned to Orana, who looked fit to disappear. “Don’t mind her, Orana. She’s jealous that nothing she made with ramson was half as good as this,” and she took another slurping spoonful.

Leandra raised her brows to Varric, appealing to his more refined palate. He took a bite that combined the savory meat, sweet sparrowgrass, and creamy soup, and he closed his eyes. He met Leandra’s gaze with a soft regret before turning to the newest member of Hawke’s little family.

“It’s fit for the Orlesian empress, m’lady. Shame that the ramson season is so short, though.”

“Oh, father has a soup for every season, messere. Spring is ramson, summer is bitter greens, fall is apple, and winter is cabbages.” She wiped her eyes. “Was cabbages. Forgive me. I miss him.”

Hawke mopped her bowl with a crust of bread and cleared her throat. Orana met her eyes. “He taught you well. I think he would be very proud of you today.” The elf’s lips twitched in a fragile smile. Hawke spoke around the last bite of her meal. “Varric. We should go.”

He dipped his chin. “We can pick Anders up from the clinic. Do you suppose Fenris—”

“Fenris had a long day,” Hawke said with an evasive shake of her head. “Aveline should be free, though.”

Varric stood and offered Leandra a short bow. “A pleasure sharing your table as always, m’lady. I need to borrow your daughter for the evening, but I promise to return her before too long.”

Leandra pursed her lips, amused. “That won’t be necessary,” she said with a wicked glint in her eye, “it’s enough to know that she is with you.”

Varric flashed his best smile in her direction, avoiding eye contact as he looked past her toward the door. “You flatter me, m’lady. Hawke?”

Hawke rose, and he was transported to the first time he saw her, rising behind the tavern’s sticky table, unfolding like a switchblade. A thrill ran down his spine. Bartrand would pay for every step they took through that cursed thaig. He clipped Bianca into her harness and followed Hawke and Mace down the cellar stairs.

…

Varric’s legs ached. He shook them gingerly, teasing the cramps out with careful fingers. He shuffled to the chair when he could move again and pulled the tattered fur around his shoulders. He glanced at the bottle, wary, and poured another cup of water. The Seeker thought she knew dwarves, thought she understood their wants and comforts. He scoffed. There was no comfort at the bottom of a bottle; he knew that better than most.

…

Light from the red moon cast Hightown in a sick, strange glow. The hairs at the back of Varric’s neck prickled as he watched their shadows precede them, inky in the weird amber night. They came to the place Reitt had marked, hulking stone and unlit windows.

“Are you sure this is it? It looks abandoned.” Hawke squinted at the nondescript door, its plaque’s heraldry obscured by moss. Mace looked up at her with a soft whine.

“I don’t understand,” Varric said, “my people saw deliveries being made earlier this week, but it looks like this place has been vacant for months.”

Aveline frowned. “It wasn’t registered through official channels. If anyone is in there, they’re squatting.”

Varric grunted. “Squatting? Don’t let my brother hear you. I saw him stick a man like a pincushion at one of his parties just for insinuating that the cut of his evening coat was dated. Of course, the guy did interrupt a meeting with a potential client from Orlais to say it.” Varric chuckled. “Bartrand was so furious, the mother actually apologized to _him_ when she came to take her son to the healers.”

Hawke laughed. A wave of relief broke over him, odd and incongruous. She was still laughing, even now. Varric tossed a tight grin over his shoulder to her.

“Varric,” she said with a click of her tongue, “you’re stalling.”

He shrugged. “The Bartrand I know wouldn’t be caught dead in a dump like this. He’s probably long gone.”

“Well, even if he’s not in there, it’s still the best lead we’ve had in years,” Hawke said.

“Maybe we’ll find something that will explain what he was doing back in Kirkwall,” Anders offered, an olive branch after his earlier reluctance to join them. Hawke had pulled the bereft sister card to get him out of the clinic, and his shoulders were a bit more stooped than usual with the guilt of nearly denying her.

Aveline pushed on the door. It swung open with a drawn out creak, crooked on its hinges. A wall of death and decay hit them a moment later, and Varric instantly regretted the second helping of soup he’d had only an hour before.

“Ngh,” Hawke gulped, covering her mouth. “That’s ripe.”

Aveline opened a small jar of ointment and swiped a dab of it above her lips. She offered it around, and Varric took it gladly. He blotted it on generously and breathed in, mint and camphor sharp in his nose. Hawke raised a brow at him. He nodded, and she did the same. 

They moved into the foyer, boots soft and weapons drawn. Floorboards creaked in distant rooms, but they were alone with several corpses at the moment. Varric knelt for a closer look.

“Someone’s been through recently,” he said quietly, “this guy isn’t stiff yet. Blood’s still red… except,” he shifted the body over, “oh, this is weird.”

Aveline joined him. “Those are older wounds,” she said, “seems about a week’s worth of healing. And look here,” she pointed to the hands, “he was flayed on his first, third, and fourth fingers.” Varric looked, and immediately wished he hadn’t. Dry, brittle muscle and hard tendons stretched over stained bone. Aveline blew a stream of mint scented air through pursed lips. “He was in an incredible amount of pain. Death must have felt a welcome relief when it finally came.”

Varric stood with a shudder. “Lets keep going,” he said, and flinched at his own voice as it filled the small room.

Aveline took point while Anders murmured a brief word over the dead man. Hawke dropped back to stand by Varric as he schooled his breathing back to normal. She said nothing, but leaned softly into him. He pressed back, accepting the small, private comfort she offered.

The moment Aveline opened the door a guttural cry sounded from the room beyond. She raised her shield and held them at the choke point as Bianca and Blondie went to work. Hawke stayed back, waiting for one to slip by.

Their attackers’ weapons were dull and their armor ill-fitting, but they came on with no regard for form or fear and soon Aveline was forced into the room, Mace at her heels in full bay. Hawke stepped through shadow, daggers flashing as she hamstrung a charging swordsman. The man crumpled like a cut marionette, but still his sword lashed out and nearly caught her. She twisted away, surprise on her face.

“They’re berserk!” Anders cried, his staff whirling as he struck one across the jaw to shatter it. “Completely out of their heads!”

The man gaped at him, half his face hanging by dripping threads, tongue working in his exposed mouth. He loosed a horrible, grinding scream came at them again. Varric pinned him as Blondie’s staff came down on his head with a sickening crack. He slumped to the floor, flecks of bone and brain jumping free when the staff pulled away. Anders stared at it blankly. Varric clapped him on the back.

“It was you or him, buddy. You did good.”

“I was trying to be good,” Anders whispered. “I was trying…”

Hawke called from the next room. “Varric, you’re not gonna want to see this, but I think you should anyway.”

Varric left Anders to his battles. Aveline wiped her sword with a cloth, head down, knuckles white on the hilt. Hawke put a hand on his shoulder. He leaned into the next room. The smell was so powerful that even the ointment couldn’t mask it completely. Dwarves, parts of dwarves, boots with feet still in them, skin nailed to the wall, crazed writing flaking from it. He searched their faces, a desperate hope they’d be strangers. They were not.

“I knew them,” he said, his mind struggling to make sense of the carnage before him. “Hugin, that was his steward, and look, Coren, from that day at the Tethras estate…” he trailed off. A bloody journal lay open next to Hugin, pages stuck together, leather cracked and… bitten. Hawke saw him looking and edged past him to retrieve it. He stared at the room, horror as its implications sunk in. “Bartrand… what have you done?”

Hawke cleared her throat and read from the journal. “Another crate of lyrium came for the guards. Bartrand says it will make them stronger, smarter, but all it seems to do is make them more irritable. He was ranting again last night, the idol, the music. Mord didn’t show for morning chores, lazy git. Once more and I’ll dock him a week’s pay.” 

She frowned and flipped forward. “Ah.” She read again. “Back in Kirkwall. Asked why we’re not at the family estate, but all he said was, ‘He wants it. He can’t know it’s here.’ I asked who wanted it, but he just started raving, clawing at his face. I pulled his hands away and ancestors, they were raw and red, one nearly rotted off from lack of blood. He let me hold it a moment. There was hair wrapped tight at the base, black hair. Where did you get this? I asked. ‘Coren. Coren needed to hear the music.’ Coren had disappeared the day we came to this foul place. 

“Where is Coren? I asked. ‘Hugin?’ he said, his eyes clearing. I told him yes, it’s me. ‘Here, take this. She needs it. She’s calling for it.’ He shoved a heavy purse into my hands and bade me take him to the meeting place. I took him as far as the markets, but he grabbed the purse and lost himself in the crowd. When he returned his hands were empty, and he was smiling. It filled me with dread.

“The guards prowl the halls like wild animals. Lyrium bursts from their skin in jagged crystals that ooze with sick blood, and their eyes glow in the dark chambers. I have hidden myself in the larder, but it is only a matter of time. Bartrand took every living servant into his study the night after he went to the meeting place. I will hear their screaming until I die.”

Hawke read ahead quietly. Varric was frozen, numb. What was this? Hawke closed the journal and tucked it gently into her leather satchel, the one she used for dangerous reagents. She put her hand on his shoulder again.

“This isn’t right…” he said. “Bartrand was a bastard but this…”

Hawke led him to a barrel and sat to look into his eyes. “I think we both know what it is, Varric,” she said, his name in her mouth, she held it so gently. “Your brother… he’s given himself to it, just as you did in the Fade.”

The memory of its power surged through him and he shuddered, sick with remorse and bald fear. She gripped his shoulders. He took a deep breath before meeting her eyes, teeth clenched. He wrapped his arms around hers, grasping her shoulders in turn.

“Then we stop him.” He sounded far more certain than he felt.

She nodded once and stood. They swept the rest of the house, cutting through the lyrium-mad guards and whispering words for the dead as they stepped over their tortured bodies. Varric shivered. All the homes in Kirkwall were drenched in blood, but few had ever known suffering like this.

At last they faced the closed door to the master suite.

Aveline shifted her grip on her sword and glanced down at him. “What will you do, Varric?” she asked.

He laughed, harsh. “What should I do, Aveline? Look at this. If word ever got out, it’s curtains for House Tethras. Shit.” He rubbed his eye when it watered. “I always did want to drop everything and open a little tavern on the coast somewhere.”

She looked back to the door. “The arm of the law is long, but there are places even it cannot reach. Whatever you decide, you have my support.”

He exhaled, touched. “Thanks, guard captain.”

She nodded and refocused on the door. Hawke slicked a fresh coat of poison on her daggers and twirled them loosely, limbering her wrists against the coming fight. He knew there would be a fight. Nothing was ever easy with Bartrand. He checked in with Anders. Blondie seemed resigned to the task at hand, eyes dull and staff ready. 

Varric brought Bianca forward. “It’s over, brother,” he called. “You’re all alone.”

The door opened. Bartrand’s body filled the lower half of the frame, hulking and strange. He stepped into the light.

“Blessed flames,” Aveline breathed.

Red crystals erupted from Bartrand’s arms, jagged and softly glowing. His eyes gleamed dull red and his mouth… crystals forced it open, and a slick of spittle darkened his disheveled beard. He looked at each of them with no recognition in his blank ruin of a face.

“I can’t hear it,” he said, “can’t hear her anymore.” His eyes narrowed on Hawke. “You… you took her from me.” His breath quickened, bubbling into foam on his lips. “You’ll die!”

He threw a smoke bomb and disappeared. Hawke stepped into shadow as Mace charged forward, snapping at the air where Bartrand had been. Aveline brought her shield up as Anders backed into her, raising his staff. Varric cursed under his breath. Bartrand was a tough son of a bitch on a normal day, but this… 

“Right!” Hawke shouted. Varric rolled right just as Bartrand reappeared with a savage strike. She dove down onto him, but her daggers struck crystal and skidded away harmlessly. He turned, too fast, too agile for his monstrous form. Varric watched, helpless as Bartrand reversed his grip on the dagger and plunged it deep into Hawke’s side. Her mouth opened, silent, as the dagger slid from her flesh and the bright blood followed in a wave. Varric watched as she looked down at her hands, red and shining. She looked at him, confused.

Anders glowed with power. “Not today, you bastard,” he roared, imprisoning Bartrand with one hand and lifting Hawke from her feet with the strength of his healing spell. Aveline rushed forward to batter Bartrand with her shield, shattering the crystals and drawing a gout of dark, sluggish blood where they cracked. He broke free from Anders’ spell and disappeared into another cloud of acrid smoke.

Varric rushed to Hawke’s side, pressing his hand where the fatal wound had been moments before. A scar twisted there, new and pink. She put her hand over his with a quick shake of her head, and stepped into shadow once more. 

Bartrand reappeared with a vicious jab at Anders’ ribs only to be caught in Mace’s jaws. Hawke materialized and sank her blades in Bartrand’s soft waist to the hilt, twisting as she drew them out. He tried to answer her assault, but the mabari held. Hawke whirled away and Varric sent bolt after bolt into his traitorous kin, three by three, beginning, middle, end. Bartrand screamed with rage and wrenched from the dog’s jaws, his leather armor shining and heavy with black blood. He sent Mace skidding across the floor with a vicious kick.

Aveline moved then, faster than anyone should in full plate. She struck him with the hilt of her sword, cracking the jagged shards of crystal at his temple. Bartrand fell to his knees.

“It’s gone,” he said through his broken mouth, “I just want to hear it… one more time.”

“Bartrand!” Varric shouted, “what is this?” His brother stared through him, unseeing. Something in Varric broke at that look, so lost, those blue eyes, so like their mother at the end. “Do you know where you are? Do you… do you know what you’ve done?”

“Varric?” Bartrand focused on him. “Varric, is that you?”

The brief lucidity sparked Varric’s guttering fury. “Is it— what was this for, Bartrand! Where is your pride? Your blighted dwarven honor you went on and on about when we were younger! You left me to die. You left all your men to die! And for what, some statue?”

“Idol! It’s an idol, it needs to be worshiped, but she stole it! She stole it from me.” He looked up, arguing with something in his head. “I know I shouldn’t have sold it! I know! I know…”

Varric reeled back, repulsed by his brother’s madness. He looked to Anders.

“If he wasn’t a dwarf, I’d say this is demon’s work,” Anders said. “His mind has been poisoned by something powerful… may I?” 

Varric shrugged. He’d try anything to get some answers. Anders glowed with power and pulled, and a red haze drifted from his brother’s broken body. Bartrand winced in pain, then he blinked, his eyes suddenly clear. 

Anders shook his hands. “That’s all I can do.” His voice was flat. “It won’t last. I’m sorry.”

“Varric?”

Bartrand’s voice called to something deep within Varric, the memory of the brother who raised him, protected him. 

“I’m here,” Varric said as he stepped forward.

“Varric… what have I done?”

“I don’t know,” he said, throat closing on the words. “I honestly… don’t know.”

Bartrand’s eyes went wide as he took in the grisly scene. He dragged his focus back to Varric. “Make it stop, little brother, don’t let—” Bartrand wiped his mouth and looked dumbly at the glittering red foam. He looked up. “Don’t let House Tethras fall like this. Don’t, don’t leave me like this, Varric, please. Make it stop…” he choked, his broken mouth working uselessly against the crystals jutting from it.

Anger pricked at the back of Varric’s mind. “What am I supposed to do with this?” he cried to the uncaring walls. “I thought he’d be gloating, counting his gold and commissioning paintings of the moment he sold us out but this…” he paced, rubbing his brow.

“The idol did far worse to him than I ever could,” Hawke said softly. “Worse than my most vicious dreams. Let it be, Varric. Clean up his mess one more time and let it be.”

“Clean—” Varric scoffed. “The filthy house, the mutilated bodies, sure no problem. Just another Friday night for us. But what about him?” he gestured violently toward his homicidal, insane, crystal-infused brother.

Hawke was silent, fingers digging into the loose skin at Mace’s shoulders. Aveline shook her head, though he was pretty sure he knew what she would do in is place. Shit, she already had, and she’d liked the guy. He turned to Anders. Anders met his eyes briefly and focused on Bartrand.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, Varric. Finding a cure… if there is a cure, could take years. Decades. Think of what that would do to him.”

“Varric,” Bartrand wheezed, his eyes clouding over, “make it stop, little brother. I don’t want…”

Varric swallowed hard and looked back at his brother. “I can’t, Blondie. I thought I could, but I can’t do it.” He took Bartrand by the shoulders, careful of his many wounds. “It’s okay, Bartrand. Help is on the way.”

He turned back to Hawke, an apology and an excuse on his tongue. She looked down at him, frowning. Before he could speak, Aveline cried out. Hawke’s eyes flicked up to follow and her lips parted in shock. Varric whirled to see his brother, white fletching in his hand, one of Varric’s bolts thrust deep into the side of his neck. He tore it out, and thick blood poured from the wound. His mouth moved. Varric knelt to put his ear to it, knelt to be close to the man who’d raised him one last time.

“Knew you’d come,” he whispered in a ruined voice, “always… fingers in too many pies.”

Varric choked down a sob. “I learned from the best,” he said.

Bartrand died before the madness could reclaim him. Varric pushed to his feet, numb and aching. Anders murmured last rites under his breath, and Varric let him. Hawke watched, waiting for her cue to crack wise or offer a quiet comfort. He didn’t care. He walked out of the room.

The others followed, whispering among themselves as they passed through those blighted halls, boots tacky and loud against the floor from the blood they’d spilled. Varric paid them no mind. His own mind was perfectly, carefully blank, not even a wisp of a tune disturbed the pristine nothingness, an absolute lack of any thought at all. He retraced their steps mechanically, and when he reached the exit, he passed through as though it were any door in Kirkwall. 

He kept walking. The others fell behind, and he was vaguely aware of heated words being exchanged. A pair of footsteps peeled off at the first corridor. One quickened to catch him, doggy toenails clipping on the flagstones. He walked on.

“Varric.”

Hawke walked beside him, her hips loose, stinking of blood. He was blank. Nothing. A pure white plain stretching out to eternity.

“Do you want to—”

“Not now, Hawke,” he said, cutting her off. He did not want to talk about it. Talking meant thinking and thinking meant words and words meant feelings and feelings… blank. He was blank.

She hummed quietly. They walked through Kirkwall’s moonlit paths. It was a perfect spring night now that the lesser moon had set. He shuddered at the memory of the blood red orb riding the horizon. They’d said it was merely an accident of time and space, the spheres aligning as they did every hundred or so years. Maybe so. Didn’t feel like it to him.

They arrived at the Hanged Man unmolested, the usual cadre of thugs and pickpockets doubtless driven off by the smell. He waded through the drunks and gamblers of Lowtown without a thought for what they’d say about him once he’d passed. Hawke followed in his wake, his long, deadly shadow.

He reached his rooms and stopped. Hawke closed the door, sliding the bolt and laying the bar as Mace turned circles on his rug. He stared through his table, tracing the runes in the stone, trying to remember if they were script or decoration. Bartrand had told him once, when he moved in to this place. He’d made fun of his elder brother then, called him a Stone struck old fool and kicked him out just because he could.

Hawke had taken her filthy leathers off while he lost himself in memory. She stepped before him in her soft linens, lifted his hand in hers and pulled until the glove slid from his fingers, then did the same for the other. She moved behind him to unclip Bianca, setting her carefully on her place by the wall. She undressed him, slowly, methodically, cool detachment in her touch as she laid his body bare. He closed his eyes against the alien feeling of being cared for. 

A quiet knock sounded at the door. Hawke draped his robe over his shoulders and answered it. Edwina entered with a basin, rosemary in the steam. Hawke murmured thanks as she shooed her from the room.

She bathed him then, wringing the cloth and waving it so the scalding water cooled to a warmth that broke him. He drew a shuddering breath and exhaled with a cough, and she passed the cloth over his skin without judgment, without haste. His chest shook but his eyes were dry, and his fingers dug into the flesh of his trembling legs. Hawke moved slowly around him, her cloth warm as breath, rosemary steam soothing his burning eyes with its fresh chill.

Hawke drew him up when he was clean and led him to the bed. She washed herself efficiently with the swiftly cooling water, hissing as it hit her skin. He stood, frozen, until she dropped the cloth into the water for the last time and joined him. Gently she coaxed him down, pulling the linens back to fold him in beside her. Her body was cold, cool spring night, cool water. He turned to her, ashamed of his silence, of his numbness. She drew light fingers though his hair, waiting.

“You didn’t have to do… all of that,” he said, an apology of sorts.

“Wouldn’t be much of a friend if I let you get robbed and murdered walking home after a night like that, would I.” Her lips twitched in a fleeting smile. “Aveline wanted to come too, but I made her see reason.”

“Did you tell her the Terror of Lowtown doesn’t need an armed escort?” His chest lightened with their banter. It always did.

“I told her there wasn’t room enough in this bed for all of us,” she said, wrinkling her nose.

“Oh I don’t know,” he replied, “it would be tight, but that’s part of the fun.”

She punched his shoulder, playful. “Aveline’s idea of fun is studying crime rates relative to fluctuations in the local economy,” she said. 

Varric huffed a laugh. It was hollow and brittle, but genuine. Her fingers resumed their path through his hair. His eyelids drooped, suddenly heavy. He blinked the weight away, focusing on her by sheer force of will. She shook her head, muted amusement in her gaze.

“Your mother will worry,” he said.

“Go to sleep, Varric,” she said. “I’ll be here when you wake.”


	5. *The Maiden's Favor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyy our first * chapter in this story! 
> 
> CW: Smut begins at "“Hawke—”" and ends at "“Think Mother has burst into flames yet?”"
> 
> Thanks for bearing with me in my slower update schedule! Homeschooling is something I'm uniquely NOT AT ALL suited for, so it's taking up an awful lot of my brainspace.

Varric slept poorly. A scrabble of rat claws on timber became the shift of dry muscle on bone, and he woke. Night birds called out in the lost voices of Bartrand’s guards, and he woke. A log shifted as it burned in his hearth and the scrape of wood opened the door to madness, and he woke.

Hawke was there. Her back pressed on his, soft in repose, solid as he slid through the viscous moments between sick sleep and taut wakefulness. He passed in and out of consciousness. He missed the dawn. Hawke was there.

Then, she wasn’t. He curved his back to find her and met warm sheets, a divot in the mattress where she’d been. Varric bolted upright, his hands behind him, searching and lost. The room glowed in a strange half light, a banked fire, a closed door, an overcast sky. Hawke wasn’t there. He laid back down to curl on himself. He couldn’t close his eyes. Bartrand waited for him, the fletching bright in his ruined hand. He couldn’t leave them open, wide and searching for the woman who was gone. He stared into the dark below his coverlet, whispering an old drinking song to fill the void.

_Out of the town and way down low_  
_Out in the bay where gold rings glow_  
_My fair may waits for me_

_Down by the creek where the raven wheels_  
_Down by the hill where the cracked bell peals_  
_At her side I’ll soon—_

His door sighed open. Varric pulled a dagger from his flaccid boot and rolled from the bed to move silently against the wall. He let it fall when he saw her, stained linens loosely tied at her hip, a tray balanced on one hand as she slid the bolt home. She looked up at the sound of steel on wood.

“Varric. You’re awake.” 

She put the tray on his table and the soothing scent of coffee wrapped him in its warmth. He scrubbed his face lightly in his hands, shedding sleep and grey inertia. 

“Yeah,” he said. She glanced down to the dagger at his feet. He did as well. “Thought you’d left.”

She hummed sadly. “Guess I wasn’t here when you woke after all.”

“You’re here now.” 

She offered him a steaming mug. The black coffee was ash in his mouth, but he drank it anyway. She sat alone at his table and picked at a bowl of something or other. There was one at his place as well. He drained the mug in one burning swallow and set it back on the table. She began to pour him another. 

He stopped her with a quick shake of his head, and the heavy carafe returned to the table with a rasp. He lost himself in the steam curling from his breakfast but the thought, and then the scent, of food turned his stomach. She gestured to his bed. He folded his aching body down into the sheets and submitted to the thick lethargy that clung to him. He was dimly aware of the sound of a bowl touching the floor, and of a dog taking all the pleasure in his meal that he hadn’t. At least it wouldn’t go to waste.

Hawke joined him after setting the tray outside his door. She sat at his side, propped up on a small mountain of pillows as she read his latest manuscripts, as she laid a soft hand on his shoulder, at his hip. Fitful sleep took him whole only to spit him out again, soaked in cold sweat. A fresh tunic waited for him each time. Once, he woke and she was gone. He counted the moments, knowing she wouldn’t return. She did. Daylight faded and noise from the tavern grew. Hawke brought another meal up, and she shared that one with Mace as well. She rejoined him with a mug of something that steamed with cinnamon and pepper, and though his parched tongue felt like a well-earned punishment, he accepted it. 

Warmth and spice and lilac soothed him. She helped him out of yet another damp tunic. He slept.

Varric jerked awake. He reached out, searching and… hungry. His fingers brushed steel wrapped in velvet. The steel softened. He opened his eyes.

“Still here, Varric.” Her voice was liquid moonlight, bright and lilting.

“Mmph,” he grunted, eloquent as he pulled her closer.

She slid under the covers until her bare skin lay flush with his. He swelled, warmth dispelling the torpor of the previous day as he pressed insistently against the shifting plane of her belly. He stroked her side, lingering on the newest scar. 

“Does it hurt?” he asked, a return of curiosity. He ran the pad of his thumb gently over it.

She shook her head. “Nah, it’s mostly numb. Anders was quick, but not quick enough to save the nerve.”

The image of Bartrand drawing his blade from Hawke’s armor flashed in his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut with a small shake of his head and gripped her tighter, apology and remorse. How many more wounds would she take for him? She moved beside him again, ducking below the covers as she slid from his hand.

“Hawke—” 

He cut off with a sharp inhale when her lips traced the underside of his erection. He felt himself gripped in strong fingers as her tongue swirled delicately around his tip, a low chuckle when his hips twitched on their own. He threw the covers back to watch, her hair inky in the dim light, her breasts pushed up on the thick muscle of his thigh. Her eyes flicked up to his, sparkling with mischief, and she tugged upward as her wicked lips moved down, teasing the silken skin with her clever tongue. He groaned and rolled his hips gently against her, stuttering her rhythm, making her pause. She lifted her head with a huff.

“Let me do this for you,” she said, her tone lightly scolding.

He laid back obediently and she returned to him, her grip teasing and firm, her mouth crafty and welcoming. She worked him until he was panting, his mind focused entirely on _here_ and _now_ and _her,_ sheets clenched in his hands to keep from thrusting full against her. He breathed a word, it might it might have been her name, it might have been _please_. She moved then, sweeping up to spear herself on him. She was soft, as soft as he was hard and both slick with desire. He sank into her with a kiss, steel and velvet, sweet oblivion in her depths and all, all for him.

They were slow, present and painstaking in the low light of his hearth fire. He held her hips and traced the whorls of new scar tissue. Another scar for the collection, another morning with her. His mind wandered, troubled. Hawke saw, and stilled her hips.

“Varric?” she asked, soft.

He drew himself back to his room, his bed, back to her. “Sorry,” he said, stroking the new scar. “Took a wrong turn, got a bit lost.”

Her lips twitched in a frown. “We can stop—”

His fingers tightened. “No…”

He swallowed. If they stopped now there was no bottom to the pit that loomed below. He raised up to kiss her, to bury himself in her certainty. She rolled her hips slowly, safe harbor in the storm. He met her as an equal, strength meeting strength, never mind that it trembled.

“In that case,” she said, breaking away to press him down and lift again. A slow smile made her teeth gleam in the guttering firelight. “As you were.” 

He tightened his grip at her gentle irreverence and drove into her, once, twice. She cried out and cried for more and he gave, fucking away the guilt, the paralysis. He flipped her. She landed on her back with a laugh. Still laughing, even in the dark. Especially in the dark. He pressed her thighs down to sheath himself with one sure thrust. She gasped, her eyes rolling to the ceiling beyond him as her fingers dug into his back, urging him on. 

He slammed into her, his back and thighs burning as she held on, anchoring herself on his solidity, fierce to match his ferocity even as her flesh yielded around him, her core a vessel he was desperate to fill. He poured himself into the crucible of their sex, burning away his fear and his fragility, his black vice and his endless lies. 

She shifted, canting her hips to press closer. He felt her shiver around him and looked into her eyes, pupils blown wide with desire and the low light. She ran her hands over his arms, clever fingers tracing the hard muscle. She turned to kissed his bicep, the cords in her neck flexing when he rocked into her.

“You’re beautiful like this,” he breathed, grinding hard against her, hard and slow the way she liked it.

“You are,” she said, looking up at him with a grin. 

He shook his head and thrust again. “I’ve been called many things,” he said, “but beautiful is a first.”

The teasing light faded from her eyes. “I mean it,” she said, squeezing him within. “You are one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.”

He flexed in return. “Oh I’m a thing now?” He grinned at the way her eyelids fluttered. “Way to objectify your lover, Hawke. Now I feel dirty.”

She rolled her eyes and rolled her hips, impatient with every part of him. “Take the compliment and fuck me properly, impossible dwarf.”

“As m’lady wishes,” he growled against her ear, and he dropped low to press her down into the bed. 

He pounded home, friction building as she coiled tight and tighter. She came with a bitten back cry, her warmth pressing around him in waves. He thrust once, again, and tipped over the edge himself. He surged forward, harsh breath leaving his chest in a groan as he pulsed within her, as she drew him in, as he reached further, as she exhaled slowly, as he knew her deepest places, soft and secret. 

She coaxed him down and kissed him, long and lazy, his hair a dark golden curtain. All too soon, dawn crept beneath his door to paint the stone in its amber light. He lifted his head to mark it, the passage of time, another night unbroken by sudden absence. He looked back down at her, and he wondered.

“Good morning,” he said with a grin.

“Mm,” she said, drawing one of those long legs along the inside of his. “It certainly has been so far.”

He rolled to his side, a silent word of mourning as he slipped from her. She followed, propping herself up on an elbow.

“Think Mother has burst into flames yet?” she asked, a smile not quite hiding the worry in her eyes.

He chuckled. “Didn’t you hear her at supper? She all but threw you into my bed.”

Hawke laughed, startled and lovely. “How modern of her,” she said, trailing fingers over his chest.

“Give her some credit, Hawke. She did give up everything she knew for your father.”

Her smile faded. “She did,” she said, newly sad. “I wonder if she regretted it. Money was often tight, and it was a rare year when we didn’t drop everything and move to yet another town to stay a step ahead of the templars.”

Her mood was catching. Varric thought of his own mother, the father he never knew. Then he thought of Bartrand, and the memory of those blood-soaked halls rushed through him like a flood. His eyes burned. He rolled to his back.

“Oh, shit, Varric. I’m sorry, I’m—”

He shook his head and stared at the ceiling, willing his mind to go blank, wary of slipping into the grey desolation of the day before. She placed her hand on his chest and he laced their fingers together, pressing both against his swiftly beating heart until it slowed. He cleared his throat.

“Oat mash?” he asked when he could trust his voice.

She sighed. “I suppose. They won’t have the potatoes again for months, will they.”

He huffed. Hawke’s love of all things greasy and fried was one of very few things he could depend on. He gave her fingers a final squeeze and sat up, stretching the sweet ache from his legs. Hawke rolled off the other side of his bed and picked through her neglected leathers.

“Soap’s on the side table, rags and a brush in a bucket underneath, and there should be a pitcher of water around here somewhere,” he said as he pulled a fresh outfit from his wardrobe. 

Hawke flashed a grateful smile at him and began tracking the necessities down while he dressed. She was set up on his table, scrubbing away by the time he laced his boots. He straightened to watch her, the swell of her shoulder, the delicacy in the curve of her neck, the gentle sway of her breasts in time with the sweep of his brush. That silver thought bubbled through his mind, tenacious and intrusive.

“Send a note to Mother?” she asked without looking up. “Let her know we’re alive?”

“Naturally,” he replied, looking away from her at last. 

Food. Information. He opened the door.

_I could do this for the rest of my life._

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly as he closed the door behind him. He looked over the tavern. Corff was taking stools down, preparing for the first wave of customers while Norah wiped the floor with a mop older than the 'Man itself that did more to spread the filth than remove it. Varric descended into the sour air of the tavern, filling his lungs with the potent cocktail of spilled ale, stale smoke, and old cooking oil. It wasn’t pleasant, but it was home.

“Norah,” Varric said brightly, smiling when she looked up with a scowl. “Two orders of oat mash and toast, love, and the coffee service.” She grumbled as she leaned the mop against the ancient stone walls and slouched to the kitchens. “I’ll take them up, just leave the tray on the bar,” he called after her.

“Varric,” Corff said with a yawn, “rough night? Bit of a stir after you passed through.”

Varric turned to the door, hoping to find a runner in the square. “Just business,” he said, his tone cool enough to end most conversations.

“Thrask was looking for you,” Corff said. Varric sighed inwardly. “Something about mages going missing, or, maybe it was mages they’d found after someone else had lost them? He was pretty deep in his cups. He’s come in more often these last few months, and stayed later. I’m starting to worry about him, if I’m being honest. Think you could talk to him? He always seemed like a decent sort.”

“Sure, Corff,” he said, not really listening. “I need a runner. Anyone pass through yet?” 

The barkeep shook his head. Varric took advantage of the break in conversation to slip through the door. He squinted through the Lowtown gloom, and soon enough found what he needed. He sent the kid off with a message and a copper, and the promise of silver if she returned with a note. He went back to the bar.

The tray waited for him, coffee and mash for two steaming on its dull surface. He nodded thanks to Norah and Corff and stepped carefully through the tavern. When he reached the door he thumped it gently with his boot, and Hawke’s bright green eye appeared in the crack when it opened.

“What’s the password?” she hissed, biting her lip to keep from smiling.

“Andraste’s knickerweasels,” he said, deadly serious.

“Wrong.”

“Nug licking mushroom farmers.”

A muffled giggle. “Hardly.”

“Hairy tits of ancestors,” he said, a persistent grin tugging his lips.

She snorted, laughing openly. “Nope!”

The tray was getting heavy. “Hawke rules,” he said, deadpan.

The door opened. Hawke hid behind it, and she closed it quickly once he’d passed through. Her armor was draped everywhere to dry, and his coat was spread in front of her chair, a patch of damp in the place where someone had bled on it. He turned to her and nearly dropped their breakfast. She grinned.

“It’s nice, right?”

It was more than nice. She’d put his robe on. Not his usual black one but gold, some gaudy thing a distant relative had given him for one dwarven holiday or another. Well. It had been gaudy on him, but on Hawke? The cloth gleamed like molten sunshine against her dusky skin. Its cut was luxurious enough for royalty, the sleeves like wings, the front open and scandalous. He set the tray on the table and closed the space between them.

“I never thought I’d say it, but may the Stone bless my great aunt Belhima and her horrible taste in fashion. Hawke, that’s… you’re…”

She grinned. “May it be noted on this, the fourth day of spring in the year 9.34 Dragon, Varric Tethras was at a loss for words.” 

He pulled her hard against him, his hand on the back of her neck in urgent appeal. She acquiesced like a queen, bowing to his lips and claiming them for her sovereignty. He pushed her gently toward the bed, but she resisted with a smile.

“Food first,” she said, trailing fingers over his shoulder and down his neck as she returned to the table. 

Varric groaned at her denial, but his belly rumbled in concert. She tossed a knowing grin back to him as she hung the duster on its hook. They sat to breakfast, steaming coffee and seeded bread, the previous day a hazy memory. He tore his eyes from the play of gold and fire on her breasts with great reluctance.

“Careful, Hawke,” he said as she pushed drippy egg and mash onto a corner of toast. “Looks like you could get used to this without too much effort.”

She bit into it and tossed the dry edge at him. He caught it and popped it into his mouth.

“Careful yourself,” she said, wrinkling her nose at his gross intimacy. “You already are.”

He chewed slowly, studying her reaction, her deflection, the almost-truth she’d landed on quite by accident. He wasn’t used to this yet, but he wanted to be. It was godsdamned unsettling. She squirmed under his observation.

“We’re taking the catamaran out today,” she said, breaking the silence. “Me and ‘Bela. Want to come?”

Varric narrowed his eyes. “Do I look like I sail?”

Hawke shrugged. “Have you ever been?”

“Only under duress,” he said with a shudder.

“You’d like the Maiden’s Favor, and it’s supposed to be calm today. ‘Bela said there’d be barely enough wind to fill the sail, and no chop but wake from the bigger ships.”

“Hawke. I don’t swim.”

“So, don’t jump off?”

He grumbled into his coffee. Hawke kissed to Mace and set her half-finished bowl of mash on the floor, petting the dog absently as she wolfed down her breakfast. Mace went back to flop on his carpet when the bowl was licked clean, and Hawke took another piece of toast. She cleared her throat. Varric met her eyes over the dark bread.

“Come with us,” she said. “It’ll do you good. Get you out of that head for a while.”

He shrugged. “Alright. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when I go over the side and sink like a stone.”

She beamed at him. “I’d save you, Varric. It’s what I do.”

…

Varric wavered. The fire burned low in his small hearth and the chill had seeped into his very bones. Once again he was up too late. They were coming to the darkest part of his story, failures and fatal mistakes, the horror of blood magic and the many rooms of madness. Would he load all the suffering into the beginning of his tale, then lull the Seeker into a sense of security before shattering it with Hawke’s battle against the Arishok? Or would he spread it out, slowly building to that brutal climax? 

He slid from the chair to bury himself in the cold bed. He reached down to stroke his fading erection, the bright memory of that morning pricking his libido even now. His flesh perked at the touch but it was strangely mechanical, a simple equation of friction and heat. He drew his hand up to rest on his belly and let the desire seep away. Heat radiated from his palm, soothing the empty twist in his gut. He closed his eyes and remembered the sunshine.

…

The Maiden’s Favor bobbed gently at the private docks, which were blessedly upwind of Kirkwall’s main port. Hawke looked back at him, radiant in the cool spring breeze. He shook his head at her, but much as he tried to keep the answering smile from his lips, he could not. He studied the catamaran ahead of them. It was a tidy little boat as boats went, the floaty bits painted a blinding white, a woven net and a teak cabin slung low between them. Her sails were tied up tight, and he could tell from the boardwalk that they were dyed the exact shade of ‘Bela’s blue scarves. Brass fittings gleamed golden in the sun, bright and bold as the Rivaini herself.

“Well?” Hawke said as they approached.

“It looks… seaworthy,” he said, admiring its cheerful colors and plucky bearing in spite of himself. 

Hawke bumped him with her hip. “She’s no Siren’s Call Two, but she does just fine in the water.”

'Bela popped her head out of the cabin. “Hawke, what have I told you about being early?” she said with a yawn. A sly smile pulled at her lips when she saw them. “Oh, you brought company. Never thought we’d see you aboard, Varric.”

He crossed his arms. “What, was the invitation lost in the hall from your rooms to mine?” he said with an answering grin.

She laughed. “That hall is the most treacherous twenty feet in all of Kirkwall,” she replied. “Are you joining us? Or were you just escorting Hawke through the mean streets of Hightown?”

“You know what they say,” he said with his most charming smile, “two’s company, but three is better.”

Rivaini cackled. “ _They_ don’t say that, _I_ say that.” She tilted her head to the side nearest the dock. “Come on then.”

Varric pulled himself carefully into the boat, latching onto the side when it shifted in the water. Hawke made quick work of the moorings and leapt lightly onto the gleaming deck, her body forming a loose curve that was made for the sea. Varric was instantly jealous of her easy mastery.

‘Bela called out several orders in quick succession and Hawke sprang into action. Varric ducked when the boom swung toward him, cursing sharply.

“Get belowdecks, Varric,” Rivaini said, jutting her chin to the door. 

He swayed gracelessly into the cabin, muttering to himself for agreeing to this idiocy. Fabric snapped above and his stomach rolled with the new motion, his gut and his eyes at odds with each other. 

“Haul fenders and stow the headsail line.” ‘Bela’s voice boomed through the solid teak, authority ringing in her hardened tones. “Hawke, remember the pipe calls?”

She must have, because a shrill whistle sounded as they backed slowly away from the dock. A ting of metal and a hush of rope tickled his ears, then a second snap of fabric cracked above him and the little boat lurched forward. He breathed through his nose as the sail filled and bile rose in his throat. Hawke ducked her head into the shade of the cabin.

“It’s safe now,” she said, a bit out of breath. “We’re alone in the bay and Varric, the view is to die for.”

He pushed himself upright and stumbled with the first step. Hawke caught him easily, her knees loose to take the gentle rocking of the water. 

“That’s good,” he grumbled, “because right now it feels like I might die for it.”

She laughed and helped him up the narrow stairs. His head cleared the moment they were above, the clamoring of his sour stomach drowned utterly as his eyes feasted on their surroundings. ‘Bela met his wide gaze with a knowing grin from her place at the helm.

The only ships he’d ever sailed on had been huge, ungainly things that wallowed in the sea and obscured the horizon with thick masts and tiny portholes. The Maiden’s Favor was light and open, and he could see for leagues in all directions. The black wall of his city shone in the morning sun, glittering and alive with wheeling seabirds. White gulls and oil-dark cormorants nested in its twisted carvings of the old Tevinter gods, and their short, raucous lives had crusted the ancient immortals in untold centuries of puked up fish bones and birdshit. It suited them.

He turned to his left where the Wounded Coast rose above the bay, lush with its salt-hardy greenery. His eyes followed the twisting paths he knew all too well, a shiver along his arms as they remembered the sting of sea grass. A sharp, clean smelling breeze ruffled the loose hair at the back of his neck and water lapped gently against the twin hulls, soothing as a lullaby. Hawke hummed softly.

“The sea looks good on you,” he said.

She smiled. “It feels good. Like no matter what happens it will be here, waiting for me.”

A strange pang twinged in his chest. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

She looked down at him then. He could see her parsing his tone, slightly sad, the curve of his lips, tucked in a small liar’s smile, his amber eyes… focused beyond her, fixed on Kirkwall. She sighed and dug into a pocket.

“This belongs to you.” She held out her hand.

He looked at the thing in her palm. “A ring? Are you asking me to marry you, Hawke?” He put a hand to his chest with a broad grin. “I—”

She grabbed his hand and pressed the ring into it. “Found it at the jeweler. I thought you should have it back, but…”

He looked closer. “The Tethras signet ring?” He raised his brows, surprised. “I can’t believe you found this! Bartrand—” he swallowed. Bartrand was dead. Hawke drew her shoulders up, fidgeting. He coughed lightly. “Bartrand sold it to help pay for the expedition. Huh.” He turned the ring in the sun, letting the hammer set gems sparkle in the light. “I never thought I’d see this again.” He tried to slip it on his ring finger, but it was tight. It settled around his little finger, nice and snug. He squinted up at her. “Thank you, Hawke.”

“Punch it up for your stories, yeah?” She shrugged. “Maybe I won it in a game of Grace with a Vint magister, a deserter from the Legion of the Dead, and the Viscount of Ostwick.”

“Ostwick doesn’t have a Viscount, Hawke.”

She bumped him. “Pff, next you’ll tell me that there aren’t any deserters from the Legion.”

He shook his head and bumped her back. She’d been waiting for him to do it, and it was like hip checking a wall. A quick step forward kept him from planting face-first into the deck, but did little to stem the flood of loss that came with the fear of the fall. Hawke clapped him on the shoulder as she watched ‘Bela step away from the wheel.

“Okay,” ‘Bela called brightly, “who’s hungry? I raided Hawke’s larder while you were away.”

Hawke sighed. “Did Mother see you?”

‘Bela grinned. “See me? She set us up proper, pet.” 

She waved them to the low bench along one side of the open cabin as she disappeared into the room below. Hawke unlatched a small table between them. Varric sat and twisted the ring on his finger, absorbed in the detail, the gleam of light from the Tethras signet, the sparkle in the gems. He felt Hawke watching, but black sorrow had crashed in on him at the sudden loss of balance, and her attention was just another weight to bear. ‘Bela returned with a tray in her hands and a bottle of wine swinging from her hip.

“I don’t have goblets, but we’re all friends, right?” She put the wine on the table in front of Varric. “What’s a shared bottle between…” she picked up on their suddenly cool attitude and groaned. “Andraste’s salty tits, I leave for the barest moment…”

Varric studied his hands, twisting the ring. Hawke stood to help with the tray, but ‘Bela lifted it away with a raised brow.

“It’s nothing, ‘Bela,” Hawke said lightly, reaching again for the tray. “We had a long couple of days, that’s all.”

‘Bela handed it over with a skeptical look. Hawke set it gently on the table and pulled a stuffed sandwich from the artful presentation. Varric shook enough of the dullness from his head to open the wine.

“What sort of long days?” ‘Bela asked in a conspiratorial tone, “good long, or bad long?”

Varric huffed. “A little of column A, a little of column B.” He took a short pull of wine. Orlesian red, dry and spicy. _Maker_ Leandra had good taste. He took another swig before handing it to ‘Bela.

She took it with a wicked grin. “Mm, and just… how good are we talking, Hawke?”

Hawke’s mouth was full. She held her hands out before her, sandwich in one, a bitten strawberry in the other, and thrust lewdly into the air between them. ‘Bela laughed and raised the bottle to them. Varric threw a crust of bread at her, mildly aroused in spite of… everything. 

“Ah, good for you,” she said, waiting for Hawke to toss the strawberry top overboard before handing her the wine. She glanced at him. “I sometimes wonder what we would have been like if you hadn’t come to your senses, Varric.”

“We?” Varric asked, sharpening to the present. “You and Hawke?”

Hawke tossed her hair, her lips tucked into a small smile as she sat back down. “Two fearsome pirate queens ruling the seas with an iron hand and silk unders, a lover in every port and a hundred men hanging on our every word…”

“What were you going to call your ship again?” ‘Bela purred.

“The Bloody Vixen,” Hawke said absently, taking another bite of her sandwich and chewing slowly.

Varric felt suddenly very small. It was an odd feeling. He was big by nature, big shoulders, big voice. He shifted uncomfortably and picked through the fruit.

“Huh. I’m not one to stand in the way of a beautiful dream,” he said, forcing a smile.

‘Bela smacked the back of his head. “And I’m not one to play second fiddle to a man.” 

Hawke scoffed lightly. “I could never tie you down, Isabela, and I’d never want to.”

“Mm, tying me up _is_ more fun,” she said with a grin.

Varric watched them through a veil, flirting and happy until the wind picked up. ‘Bela left to attend to her ship and Hawke turned her attention to the sea beyond the bay, blue on blue and infinite. He followed her gaze, and rather than feeling merely small, for a moment he felt instead the full scale of his insignificance. It was weirdly soothing.

“Well Hawke,” he rumbled, “I’m flexible. Up or down, I’m your dwarf.”

Hawke looked at him, warmth and stillness in her regard. “Are you?”

The question hung between them, overripe and impossibly heavy for its two small words. He shifted his attention back to the sea. She did as well after a moment, shoulders slackening as her eyes grew distant and sad. He reached around the platter to take her hand. Her fingers pressed lightly on his. Neither moved their focus from the horizon.

“I can’t promise happily ever after.” He spoke quietly, barely more than a whisper above the sound of wind on water. “Shit, I can’t promise we won’t capsize and drown five minutes from now, knowing our luck,” she squeezed his hand. He exhaled. “I’m no Prince Charming, Hawke. I’ve turned a profit on violence and I’ve killed people in cold blood. I cheat at cards, I tell wild stories about my friends to strangers, and I lie. All the time. I don’t even know why I’m doing it sometimes. I’m—” 

She turned to look at him with those green alchemist’s eyes that transmuted his center of gravity from cold stone to something with wings. He coughed against the feathers in his throat.

“I know, Varric.” His name in her mouth. She held it with such effortless grace. “I know.”

They turned back to the sea. Isabela rejoined them after a while, sun and salt in her wake. She drained the bottle and produced another, her own spiced rum. They shared it until the sun was high overhead and the platter was licked clean. Hawke took the helm to bring them back to the docks, earning a grumble from ‘Bela when she brought it in a touch fast and hit the old, splintered wood with a solid thunk. She ducked her head and stroked the wheel in apology. 

Varric climbed out the moment he could and watched the women drop sails and loop thick ropes around the hitching posts… moors? Whatever. They tied the boat up like an unruly horse and walked three abreast into Kirkwall. Rivaini split away when they passed the ‘Man. Hawke paused, watching her go. Varric watched her.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he replied. 

“I should check in with Mother,” she said, a question in the trailing edge of her voice.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, believing it. “Plenty of things to keep me busy since I lost a day.” She hesitated. “Go. Be with your family,” he said, nudging her gently in the direction of Hightown. “It takes more than, whatever that was, to keep me down for long. And Hawke,” she raised a brow, “I meant it. Up, or down.”

“Good to know,” she said with a smile that turned the wrong way in one corner. Her eyes flicked to the fine-grained stock rising over his shoulder. She drew a breath as if to speak, then let it out in a rush. He tensed. They hadn’t said her name aloud since that early morning at the Songs. He waited for it now like the guilty man does a noose.

_What about Bianca._

Every drop of sunshine he’d soaked in on the bay flaked into ash. Bianca. She had written to him only a fortnight ago, an update on the thaig, something funny that had happened in the workshop, chatty and casual. Too chatty. Too casual. It had felt strange in his hands, scented only with dust from the road, weighted with no more than the wax that sealed it. He’d put it in the hidden drawer with the rest of her letters where it laid on them like an intruder, weird and changed. He’d taken it out to read it again and search himself for a response. Nothing.

Hawke shook herself and forced a brittle smile as she returned to him.

“Grace on Tuesday?”

He nodded. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

She hummed, a spark of light returning to her eyes as she turned to go. He watched her weave through Lowtown’s sun-drenched streets until she was lost in the crowd. The hanged man twisted on its rope. He glanced up at it with a sigh, sick of living in its shadow. He passed beneath it to return to his rooms, composing a letter as he went.

_Dear Bianca,_

_Remember that thing you hoped I’d find?_

_I did._

…

Dull clanking sounded in the hall, the nightly changing of the guard. He settled on building his story slowly, for his own sake as much as for his audience. There were plenty of wild paths he could lead the Seeker down before turning to the darkest. He closed his eyes, able to rest at last with his course decided. He might tell her about the strange elvhen mirror and its hold over Daisy, or perhaps a lighthearted jaunt with Aveline as she fumbled toward ecstasy with her handsome guardsman. Yes, that was a good yarn. The Seeker reminded him a bit of his favorite guard captain, though she lacked Aveline’s solid, steady warmth. He drifted off with a faint smile, writing dialogue for ‘Bela until he slipped from consciousness.


	6. A Persistence of Weeds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: A dog dies. Not The dog, but a dog.

The sun didn’t come that morning. Varric looked out his narrow window at the thick grey blanket overhead, the fat raindrops lashing the window as if it had told one too many ‘your mother’ jokes about the clouds. Thunder rumbled in the distance, low and full of bleak promise. He huffed. At least he wouldn’t have to squint against the sun today. He leaned against the cool stone, reviewing the story he’d told in his book, adding little details from memory and from the ether. He wondered if this would be the day he made her laugh. That would be sweet. The plunge into despair was steeper when it came from such heights.

…

They lounged around the supper dishes on Hawke’s table, her normally subtle scent blossoming full between them. All three women had bathed together, and a vial of the precious lilac oil had spilled in the chaos. 'Bela perched on a table corner, playing with the sleeve of one of Hawke’s evening gowns as it draped from her shoulder like the bend in a river of blood. Merrill had taken a shift the very color of spring, an embroidery of vines twining at its lowest hem.

Varric turned to Hawke, rolling his shoulder under the spare tunic he’d begun keeping in a drawer after stumbling into her cellar one night, dripping with blood that wasn’t his. He shifted on his chair, making a note to start keeping trousers and smalls there as well. Hawke crossed her legs and gave him an eyeful of sleek thigh below her housecoat. He slipped a hand under the table to claim it, his little finger dangerously close to the cloth. She leaned forward, giving him more. 

“Marigolds!” ‘Bela crowed.

Hawke nearly spat her wine. She pressed her lips together and swallowed painfully.

“It looked like something your grandmother’s gardener would have used to mark out a plot,” Varric said, head shaking in disbelief. “That story bent like a biscuit.”

“Inventing idioms again, Varric?” ‘Bela said, eyes twinkling. “What’s that one supposed to mean?”

Hawke slapped the table and saved him. “She thought it was so clever, the metal and the flowers. Such a precious insight to her character but Maker’s breath, we are the absolute worst people to deliver a declaration of tender new love—” she dissolved into another fit of giggles, wine tipping dangerously in her hand. 

Varric pried the goblet from her fingers to set it on the table. “Can you believe she gave him that grandfather’s gig in Hightown?” He shook his head. “Maker’s breath, I can only imagine the ribbing he got for it.”

“We knew how far gone she was then, at least,” Hawke said, recovering slightly. “Aveline may be a bit thick when it comes to social niceties, but she never would have gone far without understanding barracks politics. Having a Hightown patrol fall into your lap as a young, able-bodied guard? May as well announce to everyone you’ve traded favors with the captain.”

Daisy frowned. “I don’t understand why she wanted goats and wheat. Does Donnic’s mother live on a farm?”

“It’s a human tradition, Daisy, to show the family that you can provide. Livestock and cereal crops are an… interesting choice.” Varric tapped his chin and glanced sideways at Hawke. “Where is Aveline from again?”

Hawke scoffed and crashed her shoulder into his. His fingers tightened on her leg as he recovered, and he marked the darkness that flitted through her eyes. “Don’t look at me. My family was never well off enough to consider scraping a dowry together. Why do you think Carver and I joined the military?”

Orana entered from the kitchens with their refreshed clothes draped on her arms. Hawke left for her rooms and passed her mother on the stairs. Leandra stopped at the table, and an uneasy quiet fell over them. Varric stood with a dip of his chin to the lady of the house.

“A pleasant evening, friends,” Leandra said, returning Varric’s greeting and motioning for him to sit. “I hear the lady Vallen has felled her mightiest foe to date.” The delicate skin around her eyes crinkled, warmth in their soft grey depths.

‘Bela stood and stretched, throwing her tunic over her shoulder. “She did. It was the strangest courtship I ever saw, but like everything else about her, it was brutally effective.”

“Emphasis on the ‘brutal,’” Varric said, earning a chuckle from ‘Bela.

Leandra sighed. “I'm glad for her,” she said with a wistful look on her lined face. “She’s a good woman. I hope her guardsman will treat her well.”

Daisy frowned. “I wouldn’t much like to be the man who treated her poorly. She’s so strong! Can you imagine?”

‘Bela sighed. “Oh kitten, there are lots of ways to treat people poorly that have nothing to do with strength.” 

Daisy’s eyes grew even bigger. Leandra gazed off into the middle distance, and Varric would have shaved all the hair on his chest to know what she was thinking. Hawke returned then, thumbs hooked in her belts, daggers gleaming over her shoulders. 

“Alright you two,” she said, “put those dresses back where they came from. We have a date in Lowtown with Kirkwall’s finest.”

Leandra wished them a good night as she left for the kitchens, and ‘Bela and Merrill thanked Orana before climbing the stairs to Hawke’s room. Varric stood to slap the crusted sand from his trousers and earned a grumble from the slender elf. He grimaced in apology as he shrugged into his duster. Hawke shook her head at him. 

“Honestly Varric, with those manners one would think you weren’t properly housebroken as a child.”

Orana hid a smile behind her hand. Varric pulled Hawke roughly against him to slide his hands up her waist. Her breath hitched and the buckles of her armor dug into his belly, stoking the fire she’d lit there.

“You wouldn’t like me if I were proper anything, m’lady,” he rumbled. 

Hawke ran her fingers through the loose hair at the nape of his neck. “I suppose not,” she murmured.

Orana cleared her throat and glanced up to the wide stairs, where the click of master bedroom's door indicated their friends’ return. Hawke stepped away to straighten her belts and let out a sharp whistle. Mace trotted from the library, her coat gleaming with the bath Bodahn had subjected her to on their return from the coast. 

They tumbled happily into the warm night, mildly drunk and not a bit tired. They collected Fenris from his rundown mansion and walked through the dark, empty streets without fear. Naturally they were jumped the moment they stepped into Lowtown.

“Traitor!” a masked man cried. “Take the Fereldan and the dwarf, kill the others.” 

He flung his arm forward and half a dozen woefully malnourished dogs charged from the shadows, followed by their handlers.

“Go for the throat, Mace!” Hawke cried, daggers flashing as the shabby men circled them.

The mabari snarled and leapt, only to be knocked aside by a much thinner, much darker dog. Hawke focused on the man who’d given the signal and stepped into shadow. Bianca sang from her harness. A hail of bolts tore through the ragged group, sowing confusion and felling dog and man alike. The leader’s head swiveled as he searched for the phantom that stalked him. He saw her too late. She ran him through in a fluid strike that left him staggering, and Fenris’s broadsword cut him nearly in two.

Daisy stayed at Varric’s side and wove spells that made his skin crawl. Fear, confusion, prisons for body and mind whipped past him and threw the gang’s loose rank into chaos. ‘Bela dove onto an archer who crumpled beneath her. She slid her dagger between the ribs of his partner as he turned to face her, and threw a smoke bomb at her feet when a rawboned mabari charged her.

Mace had thrown off the black dog and trotted lamely to Varric, whimpering and bloody. He picked off another dog as it bayed over its fallen master, and the fight was done.

“What the fuck was that?” Varric asked, wiping at a spatter of blood on Bianca’s stock.

Hawke was still, her daggers loose in her hands. “They were Fereldan. Those mabari… something was wrong with them.”

Fenris narrowed his eyes. “Yes, they seemed half feral, nothing like yours. Did you know them, Hawke?” 

Varric clipped Bianca in. “Now elf, just because she’s Fereldan doesn’t mean she’s on a first name basis with every…” he looked over at Hawke. She was lost in thought. “Wait, did you recognize them?”

She chewed her lip. “The men, no. The dogs?” She knelt by the one that had attacked Mace. “This is one of Mace’s litter mates. Remember when we went to get her?” Daisy had been dabbing at the rents in Mace’s thick neck with an elfroot potion. The dog perked at her name. Daisy laid a hand on her jowl, and she laid back down with a whine as her skin knitted together. Hawke moved to another. “That was one of the blacks. This is the cream brindle. Rare… rare color. Probably the only one of her kind in the city, but her condition…” She closed her eyes. “Varric. Did you ever find out what happened to Teach?”

Shit. He’d forgotten about Teach. He’d never even seen the guy, only his murdered wife and their broken, bloodstained home in Lowtown. Oh he’d sent out feelers, but as far as anyone knew the man had disappeared as soon as his last surviving dog had healed enough to walk on her own.

“I couldn’t find him after the Halford, incident,” he said, “and believe me, I tried.”

Hawke wiped her daggers with short, rough strokes. “Looks like he found us.”

They left the bodies for the guard to find and continued through the dark streets on high alert. ‘Bela spotted the next group waiting for them around a corner. They split up. Hawke stepped into shadow and ‘Bela slunk through them, while Varric and Daisy scurried silently up a roughly hewn rock wall to look down on the field of play. Mace stood with Fenris as he brought his huge sword forward, and they waited.

Varric could just make ‘Bela out in the inky shadows, and Hawke blurred in the corner of his eye as she lined up a devastating strike on their leader. He assumed she was their leader. She wore the biggest hat. He blinked. Not just a big hat, _the_ Big Hat, the Fereldan from the Undercity. Shit.

Double blades sprouted from Big Hat’s gut as a haze of confusion settled over the Fereldan gang. They turned on each other, their mabari vicious and indiscriminate. Varric picked them off one by one, his old song ringing in his ears. Big Hat had rallied and swung a mace nearly as tall as she was, but her aim was twice affected by poison and torn muscle and Hawke dodged easily. Fenris and Mace waited, counting the breaths until the poison mist cleared. Hawke and ‘Bela’s battle sense was brutal, daggers flashing too quick to see, blood flowing freely wherever they went. 

“Fenris, now!” ‘Bela cried, and elf and mabari leapt into the fray. Hawke stepped into shadow as Fenris’s sword scattered their remaining foes. A lean, hungry looking mabari charged him. Mace barreled through to crush its neck with a single bite. 

Something was wrong. The men were falling quickly, but the mabari threatened to overwhelm them. He watched for a moment. Hawke reappeared behind an archer and severed his spine with one blow to the neck. A mabari stalked her, shoulders low and ears flat. She didn’t see. Varric loaded an explosive bolt. Hawke watched the battle, a wary eye on Big Hat as her mace grew too heavy to bear. The mabari leapt. Varric took his shot. The report of the explosive hitting the dog cracked off the walls like a fall of timber. Hawke whirled to the sound, rare surprise on her face. She glanced up to Varric’s roost, a flash of guilt when their eyes met. 

She wasn’t killing the dogs.

Varric cursed her Fereldanness and took aim. The dogs fell more slowly than the men, but they fell all the same. Soon Big Hat’s dogs and men were dead, and she very nearly so. Hawke’s poisons were quick, and they were nasty. He and Daisy slid to the ground as the others cleaned their weapons. Hawke stood over Big Hat.

“Where is he,” she said.

“Fuck you, fucking… traitor.” Big Hat spat blood at Hawke’s feet.

“You feel it, don’t you?” Hawke asked. “Fire in your veins, cotton in your lungs.” Big Hat lolled up to look at her, defiant. “If I leave, you will take hours to die. Shit, you might even live til the sun rises, but you won’t be able to see it.” Hawke stuck the tip of her dagger into an exit wound. Big Hat gasped. “Things are getting blurry already, aren’t they,” she said, as casually as she might mention the weather. “Tell me where he is, and what he wants, and I’ll end this right now.”

“I don’t—” she coughed, hacking up pink foam. “I don’t squeal. I keep.” 

Hawke straightened and kicked the stone path with a muttered curse. “You keep! What ‘ave you done to keep lately? Shook down merchants? Harassed washer women?” She swooped down on the woman and tore her hat off. “I’ve kept too, leech. Where is he.”

Big Hat laughed. “Waiting for you, traitor. Teach is—” 

She broke off in another fit of coughing. When it was over she gasped and grabbed at her satchel, but the paralysis was setting in. Hawke tore the contents of the bag apart until she came to a slip of ragged parchment. Big Hat nodded.

“Waiting for you,” she repeated, her words slurred. 

Hawke dropped her head with a huff. Big Hat opened her mouth to speak again, but Hawke opened her throat instead and the only sound she made was the slow lap of blood from a poisoned heart. Mace whined. Varric shared her concern.

“Hawke…” he said, not knowing what to say next. 

“Put her hat back on,” Hawke said, standing. “She deserves that much.”

Daisy fetched the hat and placed it gently on the dead woman’s head. Hawke wiped her blades carefully, cleaning them and applying a fresh coat of poison. 

“The address is here in Lowtown,” Hawke said after a moment. “I know the place. I’ll go in first, see if I can talk to him—”

Varric cut her off with a hard laugh. “Did you take one too many hits to the head back there?”

“You’re not allowed to get yourself killed playing the hero, Hawke,” ‘Bela said with a sigh.

Fenris frowned at her. “What about any of this leads you to believe he wants to talk?”

Hawke gestured to the bodies on the ground. “Look at them. These people were desperate. Look at the dogs, starving and ill-bred.” She knelt by one, little more than a pile of matted fur and sharp bone. “Every one of these men and women had their own mabari, but at what cost?”

Varric looked at ‘Bela with a questioning eyebrow. She shrugged. 

“Hawke. Translate for the foreigners?”

She stood. “Mabari’s a sign of… social standing, in Ferelden. It en’t about money or class; we were dirt poor when Dog came to us. But with Dog, we were accepted as Fereldan even though our parents weren’t from there. That’s why this gang wanted one so badly, to show they were a legitimate outfit, worthy of the breed. Tiff knew they’d never respect their mabari as more than a symbol to be used, so she refused to sell. 

“Teach… he loved her. He loved the dogs. But he was never Fereldan. He didn’t understand the bond mabari have with their people, because Tiff did all that work. With Tiff gone… oh no.” She paled in the moonlight. “Bergie.”

She took off at a sprint. ‘Bela and Daisy chased her as best they could. Fenris turned to Varric.

“What was—”

Varric shook his head. “I don’t know, but I have a bad feeling we’re about to find out.”

Mace pranced in place, barking at them to hurry. They jogged after her, and Varric thought about his two meetings with Tiff and her dogs as they made their way through Lowtown. She’d had a radiance to her, tenacious in spite of her many hardships. Simply meeting her had shaken Hawke out of her months-long despair after losing Beth in the Deep Roads, so discovering that they’d been a pillar of the refugee community as he looked for Teach was no surprise at all. They'd provided a rare sense of normalcy for their people, Teach and his morning classes in Lirene’s shop, Tiff's annual crop of fine mabari pups. Kirkwall had lost more than a displaced Fereldan the day she was murdered; it lost a part of itself.

Mace led them through Lowtown to the border of the docks. She stopped at a blind alley, stiff with canine fury. He could hear Hawke. Seemed Teach was interested in talking after all.

“…while you sat high in your granite estate I’ve been in this pit, scraping a living from the bottom of the world.”

“Teach. I get it. Things are hard. I looked for you! I looked everywhere… where did you go?”

A soft, unstable laugh. “Away. Bergie and I went away. There was no home anymore, no reason. Not until the Dog Lords found us.”

“The Dog Lords, that’s your outfit?”

“My family. My new family. Isn’t that right, Bergie?”

Varric heard a sharp intake of breath. Hawke. She hadn’t made a sound like that since the Deep Roads.

“Teach… what did you do?”

“Dogs for the Dog Lords, Hawke. We needed dogs for the Dog Lords.”

A bow scraped on stone. Varric looked up and counted four archers on the roofs around this little hideout, and the mutter and hush of at least a half dozen fighters in the alley. ‘Bela and Daisy rounded the corner. Varric motioned for silence and pointed up. ‘Bela followed his gesture, nodded once, and pulled Merrill back around the corner.

“What do you want?” Hawke’s voice cracked. 

“Justice,” he replied. “The justice I was denied. The justice Snoots was denied. The justice—” a wracked cough, “the justice Tiff was denied. I want the dwarf.”

Varric held the groan in, but it was a damn near thing. Why were people so ungrateful? 

“Justice?” Hawke asked. “The man who did this to you lost his entire life’s work, everything he and generations of his family had built. How is that not justice?” 

She actually sounded like she believed that. Never let it be said Hawke was less than an impeccable liar.

“You took him from me!” The words were strangled. “ _Blood_ is the only currency for blood. My Dog Lords told me he... I want him! But…” the bow scraped again, “I’m happy to start with you.”

Varric stepped into the light.

“It’s nice to be wanted,” he said with a smile, speaking slowly as he counted the men against them. “I don’t believe I ever had the pleasure. Teach, was it? Varric Tethras, at your service.”

Hawke rolled her entire head at his grand entrance. Teach stared at him from under his bushy brows, his hair wild enough to match his dead wife’s. He had the gaunt, sallow look of a man who’d been living on potatoes and bark tea, and his pale eyes burned with madness. A dirty black bag lay at his feet.

“Varric. This is Teach. He wants to kill you.”

“Teach.” Varric tilted his head. Teach stared at him, mouth working silently. “I hear you used to be a schoolteacher! That’s a noble calling, serah. What do you say, we forget about all this and set you up with a lovely classroom for all the refugee children. I can make it happen, just say the word.”

Teach looked at Hawke. She nodded. “He can. He has contacts all over Kirkwall. Merchant’s Guild, Chantry, whoever can help.” She put a hand on Varric’s shoulder. “Wouldn’t that be nice, Teach? You could see all your old students again. They missed you something awful.”

Varric spread his hands. “What do you say, friend? Will you return to the needy children of this city?”

Teach looked from Varric to Hawke, from Hawke to Varric. His eyes glistened. The dirty bag at his feet moved. Varric stared at it, confused. The bag whined softly. It was the saddest sound he had ever heard. Teach clenched his jaw. 

“Too late. Too late, silver tongued demon.” 

The old man drew his bow with an unexpected swiftness. They were so close there was no way he’d miss, no way Varric was walking away without a few new holes in him. 

“ _Die,_ you son of a—”

Varric blinked, and the hilt of Hawke’s dagger sprouted silver and red in the old man’s throat. ‘Bela leapt down on the nearest dog lord, cracking his neck and pushing Varric to the ground. Teach’s arrow flew wide to lodge in one of his own men. Fenris and Mace charged, pushing the ill-equipped fighters against the wall in a fury of teeth and steel. The battle was short. Hawke dropped to her knees before Teach to push his corpse off the crumpled black form beneath it.

“Bergie,” she said softly. 

The dog tried to lift her head. Hawke placed it in her lap, and she stroked the rough, patchy fur like it was the richest velvet. Mace laid down beside them with a sigh and muffed against the scarred black muzzle. Hawke bowed over them, whispering. Mace whined once, but Hawke pointed to Varric and she got slowly to her feet to sit beside him. Hawke took a clean dagger from her satchel.

“Get her out of here, Varric,” she said. 

Varric left, feeling as though he’d been sent away as much as the dog. He glanced over his shoulder to see Merrill kneel with them and put her hands on Bergie’s protruding ribs. He took Mace to sit with him on the steps leading back to Lowtown. She laid at his feet with a soft whine.

“Sorry girl,” he said. “Mother knows best.”

He watched the ships in the harbor. The gentle rise and fall of the sea breathed a facsimile of life into the soulless timber, and he breathed with them. He put his head on his arms. Too much of this traced back to him. If he hadn’t interfered, maybe Teach… no. If he hadn’t interfered, Hawke would have figured it out on her own. She would have told Teach about Halford and the Coterie, and Maker only knew what they’d have done then. She’d left him no choice the moment she— 

‘Bela and Fenris turned the corner, and he set that line of thought aside. They walked up the stairs, making _the fuck was that_ eyes at him while Merrill followed with Hawke on her arm. Varric fell in step beside them to catch the odd whispered word as they spoke, and they walked to the Hanged Man without any more trouble.

‘Bela claimed their table. Norah swished by for their order and Varric left for his suite, desperate to change out of the trousers that were creaking with blood and sand. He’d only just tied the laces on a fresh pair when his door sighed open.

“Hawke?” he asked when she entered.

“Mind if I…” she sank into her chair. 

He sat beside her, waiting for the accusations to start. They didn’t.

“Hey,” he ducked into her line of sight. She stared through him. “Do you want to—”

“No.” She huffed. He put a hesitant hand on her shoulder. She didn’t shrug him off. “I’m fine. Just, too busy downstairs.”

“Should I grab your drink…?”

She tilted her head to look at him. “Are you drinking tonight?”

He leaned back. “No. Probably not.”

She nodded. Swallowed. “I’d like some water,” she said.

He poured her a glass. She drained it. He poured another. She studied this one, lost in thought. Varric broke the silence. 

“I can’t believe he was here the whole time. Looks like I’ll need to have a chat with my Darktown boys.”

Hawke sighed. “I should have asked Anders to keep him longer. He was one of those guys who was always on edge, you know? Quick mind, quicker temper.” She sipped her water, then put it on the table to lean against her chair, arms crossed. She sniffed. “Shit.”

“This is why you told me to back off, isn’t it.”

She scoffed. “Yeah. I knew that you getting to Halford first would fuck him up, but this…” she shook her head. “It wouldn’t have stopped with the merchant. He had a list of grievances a mile long, and you were just the beginning. A hirsute amuse bouche, if you want to be Orlesian about it.” She glanced at him. He flicked her a half smile of encouragement. She slouched in his chair and rested her jaw on her hand, muffling her words. “Well. It’s a good thing you stuck in his throat. He had plans. Said he wanted to drown the city in blood.”

Varric almost laughed. “Drown the city in blood? With what, some badly outfitted farmers and their starving dogs? Besides, Kirkwall’s been drowning in blood for years. It’s sort of our thing.”

“He’d been talking to the Qunari.” Varric made a small noise of surprise. She nodded. “He said something about the Arishok’s tally.” He raised a brow. She shrugged. “Kirkwallers may fear him, but people on the outside, the poor, refugees… they think he can offer the justice they’re denied.”

“Careful Hawke, you’re starting to sound like you have a crush on the guy.”

“Pff, he’s just as bad as anyone.” She deepened her voice. “Obey or perish.” She scoffed. Varric chanced another half smile. She didn’t return it, though the lines of her face softened. “Teach just… lost his way. Bloody flames, I didn’t recognize him until he spoke. He was a scholar, remember? All that elegant intensity beaten into him in Val Royeaux, utterly beaten out after a couple years in Darktown.” She picked at her nails. “I really thought he’d take you up on your offer. For a moment, anyway.”

He buried his surprise in a study of gentle concern. His offer had been a ruse to give ‘Bela and Daisy time to take out the archers on the roof. Build a school? Who did she think he was? 

“Well, thanks for saving my hide when he declined. That can’t have been easy.”

“It was the easiest thing in the world,” she said, tilting her head at a slant that asked _are you serious now?_ “He would have killed you.”

Warmth blossomed in his chest. He took a deep breath to chase it back down before replying. 

“Huh. Well. I guess I owe you one.”

She huffed. “Cover for me down there, and we’ll call it even.”

“Shall I tell them you slipped out the back? Maybe… you had a note from your mother?”

She grunted. “Tell them I passed out in here. Close enough to the truth you won’t have to remember details.”

“I can stay…”

She waved him off. “Go, be entertaining. Make up a good story about tonight.”

He stood and pressed a kiss to her crown, lingering a moment in the lilac. “I will. I’ll even keep an eye out for that wayward guardsman we were supposed to meet an hour ago.”

Hawke slumped to the table. “Fuck. I should be there—”

Varric pressed her gently into it. “Nonsense. You have four of the best brawlers in all of Kirkwall looking out for you, and the greatest bullshit detector in Thedas.”

She huffed. It was almost a laugh. “Yeah, Isabela. You’re the greatest bullshit _spreader_.”

He patted her. “Rest up, Hawke. I’ll be back before you know it.”

He left for the tavern. The city guardsman was still there and still buying rounds, and most of his new buddies deserted him when he picked a fight he had no chance of winning. He sang like a nightingale when he lost. They had their next target, but there wasn’t much anyone could do until morning.

Varric rubbed his brow as he sat back down to their table. ‘Bela produced a pack of cards, the good kind according to her, and he stayed for a hand or two before bowing out to check on Hawke. He whistled Mace up from her spot on the floor, and they left to cheerful catcalls.

His rooms were quiet when he entered. Hawke was laying on his coverlet in her stained linens, her breath too deep and even for sleep. Mace turned her circles on the floor and flopped down with a doggy sigh, and he moved quietly around the room, setting things down, hanging things up, washing what he could with what he had. It wasn’t quite enough. Hawke didn’t stir until the bed sank below him.

“The guardsman talked,” he said as she shifted closer.

“Thanks V,” she said, “Debt repaid.”

“Good, gives me a reaction to be on the wrong side of a favor. I get the worst rash on my unmentionables.” She huffed a laugh. He brought his free hand up to work the muscles in her back. “Maker’s balls, Hawke. You’re a mess.”

She snorted. “Now he’s honest.”

“Wouldn’t be much of a businessman if I couldn’t do both.”

Hawke grumbled into her pillow. Varric worked until his hand began to cramp, then slid his palm below her tunic to glide over her bare skin. She inhaled sharply but he stayed the course, stroking the scarred length of her back in an unhurried motion until the tension bled away. She sighed and settled deeper into his bed, so deep he thought she might stay this time. He swallowed the hope down as it beat wings against his throat.

He let himself doze after a while. When he woke, she was wasn’t there.

He sat up, fuzzy and disappointed. Her armor was gone, a note saying she needed to be at her estate on his table. He tweaked the corner of the brand new sheet of parchment she’d used and turned it over. He wrote across the top in flowing script, then set dash points in regimented spaces down one side. A list appeared.

One: My bed is large enough for both of us.  
Two: Hightown is far away by foot, and the carts stop running at ten bells.  
Three: They’ll have the potato breakfast again soon.  
Four, five, six, ten, fifteen…  
Twenty-eight. I love you.

He stared at the script with red eyes. He rinsed the quill and set it in its holder, corked the ink, and dragged his sorry ass to bed.

…

Varric sipped his coffee. The boy had come early that morning bearing news with his breakfast. Seemed the Seeker had been doing some additional reading, and now had questions about his other book, a bound crime serial which had nothing at all to do with the one she’d stabbed. Nothing. Varric sipped his coffee.

Shit.

…

A low voice tickled his ear, its owner greater than striking distance, not so far as his door. It was reading something in a sing song cadence he recognized, but that was impossible. There was a continent between them. Had to be. Guild rules. He pressed a pillow to his head. What was this hot hairy nonsense. Dwarves didn’t dream.

“Fourteen, your head rests on my shoulder with a weight that’s been missing my whole life. Fifteen, I had Corff put up a shelf for your effects months ago, but I never told you. Sixteen—”

Varric threw a pillow at the voice. It broke off with a soft chuckle. 

“You’re not here,” he said.

The bed shifted under her weight. “All evidence to the contrary,” Bianca replied. He groaned. “Your latest is a real page-turner. Be sure to give your editor my gratitude for that advance copy.” 

He pushed up to glare at her and let the sheets fall from his bare chest. She gave him a detached once-over. It was full night outside, but his hearth roared with a newly laid fire, and Bianca looked fresh as a field of barley in a cloak of morning dew. She sniffed pointedly, and he did the same. Hawke's lilac was stronger than usual, unmistakable thanks to the spilled vial. He rubbed his face.

“Why are you here? _How_ are you here?”

She sighed dramatically. “Is it so much to ask for a reception that’s the right side of tepid for a change?”

“Bianca.”

“I was in the neighborhood,” she said with a sly grin. “We were delivering the first shipment of drills to a new client. A presentation by the inventor was one of the stipulations of the deal, but our ship began taking on water at an alarming rate a handful of leagues out. We docked just after luncheon, I ran into Nakita a few hours later, and here I am.”

Varric shook his head. “You foundered your own ship just to pay me a visit?” Her grin deepened into something wicked, and she shrugged. He huffed. “I don’t know whether to be flattered, or worried about you.”

She put a hand on his knee over the cover. “You don’t ever have to worry about me. It was all well under control.” She watched him, keen blades submerged in the clear water of her eyes that peeled his layers away with no effort at all. She took her hand back. “You found it, hm?” He opened his mouth to explain, but she went on. “She’s magnificent, Varric. You both are, together.”

His teeth snapped shut. He cleared his throat. “You—” his tongue curled on itself. He coughed. “You saw her? Us?”

Bianca nodded. “I was supposed to stay in my cabin, but you know me; I’ve never been good at obeying orders. You didn’t notice a certain lack of birdsong during your constitutional around the coast yesterday?”

He had noticed, but hadn’t thought it worth mentioning. “That was you?” 

“Mmhm. You nearly made me slip near the end, though. ‘I’m going to draw a picture of where she wants to touch you.’ My cheek is still sore from biting it so hard.” 

He chuckled. “They were ridiculous,” he said. He tilted his head. “You must have been out there for hours. How did you get away?”

“I faked a fainting spell after supper and retired to my berth with express orders to remain undisturbed for the rest of the evening.” Her smile turned secretive. “I’m in a delicate condition, you see.”

Varric laughed. He didn’t know what else to do. “Ancestors take you, woman. You spent an evening scrambling on the coast spying on us while you’re with child? And I’m not supposed to worry about you?”

She shrugged. “The babe is strong, and we’re past the worst months. My healers have recommended daily exercise since the beginning, though, they didn’t specify what sort.”

“I hardly think shadowing a patrol through hostile territory is what they had in mind.”

She studied her nails. “It all turned out, didn’t it?” He grumbled. She sighed. “I didn’t come only to tease you about your new lady love, amusing as it is to see how scarlet your ears go.” She looked at him with a syrupy sympathy. He frowned. “What happened with your brother, Varric? Why did you tell me to stay away from the thaig?”

He pulled his knees up to rest his elbows over them and stared into the shadows his fire threw on the wall. The memory of that night threatened to swallow him whole, but he beat it into submission with a singular determination. He wouldn’t break in front of her. Not again. Not ever again.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t heard it. The red lyrium’s song.”

A small intake of breath, surprise? Guilt? He couldn’t look at her to be sure. Looking would mean breaking and he wasn’t going to burden her with that. She had enough to carry. He distracted himself from the pit below by focusing on what was in front of him. 

“I’ve heard it.”

“So you know what it’s like. He had that chunk of it for years. Shit, he probably slept with it under his pillow. It drove him mad.”

She shifted, slipping into her smith’s leathers without moving an inch. He met her eyes, and a chill ran down his spine. Back in Kirkwall, in her first smithy, even at her most focused she’d never lost her essential spark, a bright humor that gleamed through whatever frustration she met in that small, dank space. That spark was gone. In its place was something as beautiful as a fine marble statue, and as lifeless. 

“It’s annoying and dangerous, but so is regular lyrium. What does that have to do with my thaig? By the Stone, I could spend the rest of my life down there and only discover a fraction of—”

He shook off the disquiet she’d stirred in him. “Bartrand nearly killed us for it! And then… he killed himself. Right in front of me, with one of your bolts.” 

She tilted her head. “That’s horrific, Varric, but I don’t see—”

Varric breathed through his anger, tempering it, honing it from a hammer to a scalpel. 

“He’d poisoned his guards, made them eat the stuff, and his servants—” Varric bit his tongue. He wasn’t going there. “When we finally found him, he didn’t recognize any of us. Not even me, not until he was half dead, and it wasn’t—” the words stuck in his throat— “it wasn’t just his mind. The stuff had grown on him, _in_ him, like a parasite.” 

She watched him with those marble eyes. Ancestors, she’d changed. “I’ve not observed anything like that. Perhaps it was only the idol that was cursed? Lyrium is tricky enough, it likes to hum and explode for no reason, but with the proper safety procedures—”

“Hang proper, Bianca! Whatever normal lyrium can do, this does ten times worse.” He tightened his hold on his knees. “I… I can’t prove it. If what he did ever got out… you have to believe me. I’m sorry, but you just have to take my word on this one.”

She stood with a sigh and a pat on his shoulder. “I’m sorry for your loss, Varric.” 

He rubbed his brow. She’d always been so damned stubborn, but this was different. Fuck it. He’d wanted this bullshit to be someone else’s problem, and now it was. He’d done what he could. 

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe it was just the idol. Wouldn’t be the first time a cursed object nearly brought an entire family down.” She turned to leave. He caught her wrist. “Swear to me you’ll be careful anyway. Swear you’ll keep that place a secret.”

A patronizing smile wormed its way across her face. A whiff of disgust wrinkled his nose.

“Oh Spots, I’m always careful. And you should know better than anyone, I’m very good at keeping secrets.” She glanced down at his hands. He did too. They were clean. “Hm. Guess you’ll need a new nickname after all,” she said as the smile turned sad. 

“Guess so,” he said. 

A slow swell of distant yearning filled his chest. He prodded it, curious. It deflated quickly, and in the next moment it was no more than an echo, an uncertain memory of a story he’d heard once, maybe one he’d told himself, long ago. His hand dropped from her wrist. She watched it return to his opposite elbow, watched as he closed himself away. She laid her hand on her belly. His eyes flicked over her, and she shook her head. 

“I’m not showing yet. I can feel it though, like a smooth, round stone in my belly. The twins, they were never big enough to…” she cleared her throat. He met her gaze and read the old pain and the fresh hope there as though it were written. She tilted her head, and he wondered what she read on him. “Do you want to feel?”

“Do I what?” He huffed. “You’ve mistaken me for your great Aunt Helga, B. I don’t make a menace of myself to women with child.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself. I really should be going, though. The last thing I need is to be missed at breakfast.”

He threw the covers back and stood to face her in his smalls. She gave him a quick once over, a reflex after so many years. A small grin tugged at the corner of her lips. 

“Someone’s been keeping trim,” she said. “That Hawke of yours must run you ragged.”

He studied her for a moment, waiting for a barb to follow. None did. He relaxed with a chuckle. “Never a dull moment when she’s around.” 

Bianca swept him into a tight hug. Her arms held him close, but a small hardness at his belly pushed him away. He returned it for a moment but soon released her, rattled by the unsubtle reminder of her other life. Her real life.

“How long will I be looking over my shoulder after this little visit, B?”

She rolled her eyes. “Everyone thinks I spent the night puking my guts out. No one is coming for you.” He raised an eyebrow. “Fine. I’ll send a note if anyone so much as looks at me funny.”

“It’s not just me anymore. Hawke has an entire household—”

Both her brows raised. “You’ve gone public?” 

“Ancestors, of course not—”

“Don’t, Varric. If you care about them at all, you need to keep quiet. You’re the last Tethras on the surface, and that thaig boosted your House to one of the most sought after alliances in the Guild—” he groaned; she flicked his chest— “which you would know if you ever bothered to attend their meetings. The families are already jostling to be the first to offer a suitable partner—”

He laughed. “I know, I’ve kept the paper bin by the ‘Man’s public toilet stocked with their letters.”

Bianca crossed her arms. “You really should at least act like you’re entertaining them. Take that Helmi girl out for a meal or something, just, keep an eye on her daggers.”

He sighed. “I’ve been playing this game longer than you, remember?” He tilted his head toward the door. “You should go. Don’t worry about me, and I’ll do my best not to worry about you.”

She darted forward to press a kiss to his cheek. He closed his eyes as jasmine and the bitter tang of molten iron teased the edge of his senses. He opened them to see her smile as she pulled away. 

“We’re good, V. _I’m_ good. What we had…” her hand went back to her belly, protective and reverent. “You were right. We’re both too old for this shit.” She pulled a sleek black hood over her hair, and her face was lost in its shadow. “Go get her, storyteller. Do something grand for yourself for once.”

She slipped through his door and melted into the gloom of the tavern below, not a sound or a glimmer to give her away. He sent a small hope with her, _be swift, be safe._ His bed lay below him, rumpled and empty. He sat at his table instead and pulled a finely bound book from a drawer, his own advance copy of his latest novel to hit Thedas. It fell open and he began to read. 

_She had eyes the color of topaz and dark hair that fell across her brow like sword strokes. She strolled into the parlor with such dignified elegance that Donnen didn’t realize for several minutes that she was clad in a housecoat and not a ball gown._

Varric leaned back with a groan. Maker’s balls he had it bad, and soon the whole world would know. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hard in Hightown excerpt is taken directly from one of the DA:I codex entries.


	7. Marielle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter! An interlude of sorts, before we get to the worst of it. My update schedule won't really be a schedule so much as a random vomiting of content for a bit. Blame it on the strange times, blame it on the tragedy, there's blame enough to go around!

It had been blessedly simple to throw the Seeker off the lilac scented trail he’d foolishly laid in his most famous novel. As with all his best lies, it had a brilliant, immovable truth at its center.

_The Seeker paced before him, a crisp copy of Hard in Hightown creaking in her fingers. Her heels struck the floor with martial precision and her brow furrowed with professional frustration._

_“This Lady Marielle, you were in love with her, were you not?” Her question snapped off with the haughtiness of a valedictorian counselor on his first case._

_“Of course I loved her, Seeker. Ask any successful writer and they’ll say the same. An author has to be in love with their characters, because if they’re not, no one else will be either.”_

She’d slammed the book down on the writing desk with a disgusted grunt and demanded he pick up where they left off the night before. He acquiesced, measuring his pauses and sweeping his fingers to a tortuously slow rhythm. He had to draw this part of the story out, for his own sake.

…

Muted conversation settled over them like a swath of silk, the quiet ring of crystal a silver thread in its weft. Hawke leaned back in her chair with a goblet in her hand and a smile on her lips. Varric glanced over the crowd, taking in the wigs as they uncurled in the afternoon heat, the sweat stains that darkened every woolen overcoat. His only concession to the weather was draped on the back of his chair, a charcoal gambeson of layered silk in place of his heavy leather duster. Hawke sighed noisily, and he returned to her with raised brows. 

His eyes, traitors that they were, slipped down the white linen tunic she’d worn that day to soak in the fine needlework of her crest embroidered in pale gold, the clear sky blue of the bodice underneath. She looked fresh as the ocean breeze, the only noble in all of Hightown to lean into the unseasonable heat of the day while the rest melted into waxy pools of heavy perfume and body odor in a bid to deny it. 

“The Cafe d’Or, Varric? Why on Andraste’s expansive asscheeks did you bring me here?”

He squinted against the sun. “What day is it, Hawke?”

Her shoulder raised in a light shrug. “Thursday?” 

He leaned forward to slide a wrapped parcel across the table to her. “I’ll give you a clue.”

She picked it up, weighing it in her hands, reading its shape with her fingertips. “A book?’

“Open it.”

She did, and a charming giggle bubbled from her chest when she read the cover. “Oh Maker, is this…?”

“The debut of one fatally attractive Lady Marielle and her hopelessly devoted guardsman.” Nervous energy flooded him, bouncing his knee and drying his tongue. “That’s an advance copy. It won’t release until a few weeks before Summerday.”

Hawke flipped through the pages, her smile growing wider with each passing moment. “These illustrations are lovely.” She snickered. “You’ve come a long way from dirty scrawlings in the margins of poetry books.”

“You should see what the margins of my poetry books look like now,” he said with a wink. 

Those green eyes flicked up to meet his, and a dark brow arched in interest. “Holding out on me, Varric? Shame.” She closed the book and slid it back to him. “I’ll need this autographed. Just in case I’m ever short of coin.”

He pushed it back to her, heart beating in his throat, a cool, self-assured smile on his face. “It already is, beautiful.”

Her lips pursed in anticipation as she took it back and began flipping through in earnest. The heel of his boot went _tap-tap-tap_ on the sun-cracked stretcher of the cafe’s chair. The text whirled in his mind as she went, doubt coloring what had flowed so easily at the time. Had he found exactly the words? Had he said everything he needed to, or was it all too much? He clasped his hands together under the table to keep them from tearing the book away from her. He hadn’t thought this through, not nearly enough. What was taking her so long, anyway? 

A fly buzzed at his left ear. He batted at it and re-clasped his hands. Undeterred by his distracted attack, the fly landed on his shoulder like he owed it back taxes. Disgusted, Varric’s hand jumped from below the table to flick it away, and in doing so he nearly dumped the remains of their luncheon onto Hawke’s lap. She countered the momentum and saved them both from considerable embarrassment and expense, but the look she shot him said he wouldn’t be living it down any time soon. She closed the book, and a not insignificant part of him died knowing she hadn’t read his inscription.

“Maferath’s balls, Varric! What’s gotten into you?”

He cleared his throat, but a flicker of bright red hair in the crowd caught his eye before he could settle on a comfortable near-truth. He tilted his chin to Nakita as she stopped at their table. She looked no less dangerous in the emerald sheath currently clinging to her angular form than she did in her usual oxblood leathers. He admired her dedication to the craft. A townie in leathers would have caused a stir, but a gorgeous redhead in fine Antivan silk was just part of the background noise at the Cafe d’Or.

“Nakita. You’ve met Hawke?” The women nodded to each other, a cool respect that tingled his spymaster’s sense. That wouldn’t do. He’d have to invite Nakita to the next card game at the Hanged Man. He focused on her as she towered over them. “What brings you to this godforsaken neighborhood, then?”

“Two things.” Hawke’s eyes narrowed at the sound of her voice. Nakita paused, waiting for the usual questions, or worse. Hawke, to her credit, accepted her in stride and softened that razor focus to a bored sort of attention. Nakita continued. “Last night. Your package arrived in one piece?”

Varric groaned. “Yes, but you shouldn’t have,” he said, rubbing his brow. “Truly. Next time just stamp ‘Return to Sender’ on the top and pretend you never laid eyes on it.”

Nakita hummed, low and troubled. “The white lily killer is back.” Hawke’s bored facade dissolved in an instant. Nakita nodded tightly. “A templar’s interference may have saved one victim, but he caused a scene with a visiting noble. Two more women disappeared while the guard was distracted.” She slipped a scrap of parchment under a dessert plate. “Your friend in the guard knows more. My people are looking for the women.”

Hawke’s eyes blazed. She stood, rolling her shoulder under the gauzy cloth of her tunic. Varric watched the muscle bunch and dimple as a deep fury welled in his chest. If this son of a bitch thought he could operate in their town, he had another thing coming. Varric stood as well, palming the note as he dropped a small handful of sovereigns on the table that more than covered the cost of the meal. He nodded his thanks to Nakita and shrugged into his jacket.

They wound their way through the tables busy with porcelain dishes and crystal goblets, the silver place settings, the cheese that smelled like regret, the roses wilting in their bud vases. Why _had_ he brought Hawke here? The first time was research, a scene he needed for his book. This, though? He’d wanted to set a certain mood, wanted to make a grand gesture, but this was all wrong. Hawke wasn’t the Cafe d’Or type. That was the Lady Marielle, a character, someone his audience would understand, someone simple enough for anyone to love. Hawke was the opposite, her affection guarded by alluring pitfalls and endless labyrinths, but Maker’s breath, she was worth it.

She turned to him when they reached the street, jolting him out of his thoughts. “I’ll need to stop by the estate to change, and you’ll be wanting your, ah, effects, yes?” 

He nodded as they approached the cart stand. “Meet you at the Keep?”

She waited for him to step into the small two-wheeled gig, then hopped in after him. The driver clicked his horse into a lazy walk before he could protest, and he settled onto the sticky leather seat with a grimace. Hawke beamed at him as she called to the driver.

“Take me to the Hawke estate, love, then you can drop the surly dwarf off in Lowtown.”

“Not surly,” he said in a decidedly surly tone, “just blasted hot. Midsummer came to Kirkwall about a month early.”

She slung her arms across the back of her seat. “We never had anything like this in Ferelden,” she said, “though Father would tell stories about summers in Rivain with his grandparents, before his magic came.” A wistful smile tugged at her lips. “He would have liked today.”

Varric had thought her tunic looked familiar. “That’s one of his shirts.”

She nodded. “Mother had several of them ‘cleaned up’ after we moved into the estate and I was, well…”

“It’s lovely on you.”

She flashed a liar’s smile. “That’s what Mother said.” The smile faded with a shrug. “We both got what we wanted, in a way. I could wear Da’s tunics, she had a presentable daughter.”

The cart slowed to a stop outside her door. She darted forward to press a kiss to his cheek, a breath of warm air, a breathless heat from her chest, a scent of lilacs. He craned his neck over the gig’s side to watch her disappear into the cool dark of her home as the driver clucked his horse back into its plodding gait. Usually the carts crossed the city at a good clip, smart trots or long, loping canters. Not that day. The air was thick and the heat oppressive, and he was just glad it wasn’t him plodding along those stuffy corridors. It gave him time to think.

…

The guard’s knock drew him back to the present. The door creaked open before he could rearrange his thoughts into an appropriately snide rejoinder, which was just as well. The Seeker ducked into the room, all six-foot-something of meticulous, impersonal hostility. 

“Seeker,” he said carefully, “to what do I owe the honor?”

“I have been harsh with you, Varric,” she started, strangely uncertain. A bright spark of hatred flared to life in his chest. He smiled through it. “It is only because my need is so great. Our need. For the truth.”

“Is that the beginning of a manifesto I hear? Because I’ve had enough manifestos for one lifetime, Seeker. Enough.”

She scowled. “You do not understand the pressure I am under—”

“I sure don’t. I don’t know the first thing about you, other than your penchant for kidnapping dwarves and stabbing them in the book.”

“Please! As if you would have given us anything but lies had we gone about this differently!”

He shrugged. “I suppose we’ll never know. Did you need something? Or were you just taking the air in your little makeshift gaol?”

Her spine snapped to its former rigidity. “You are hiding something, dwarf. You will tell me tomorrow. Everything.”

The spark snuffed out, smothered by the weight of the tale he’d held back. He slouched into the chair. “You win, Seeker.” Victory flared her nostrils and she turned to leave. He called after her. “Just remember when it’s over, you’re the one who wouldn’t let this go.”

She didn’t acknowledge him as she walked through the door. The boy slunk in when she was well down the hall, shoulders drawn in and head down, trying to make himself small. Varric’s supper hit the table with a rough clang, and the boy jumped at the sound. Varric steadied the tray with one hand and the boy with the other.

“Easy Nipper,” he said, smoothing the rough edges of his voice for the kid, “she’s not after you.”

“M-messere Tethras, I didn’t, I couldn’t—”

“Hey, easy,” he put his hands on the boy’s slender shoulders.

“I wanted to say something!” The boy wiped his nose roughly. “It’s not right of her to talk to you like that. Mum said the Chantry loves us and keeps us safe, but you’re not, not…”

Varric patted him and dropped his hands back onto his knees with a chuckle. “I haven’t been safe for a long, long time, Nipper. This is just a new and exciting way to flirt with danger.” The boy frowned. “Listen, I’m flattered that you were inspired to take a stand, but I’ll deal with the Seeker. Stay below her notice, alright? For me?”

The boy nodded. “No one ever notices me when I don’t want them to. Not even the cooks when I come for your meals.”

Varric tilted his head. “That’s good, kid. That’s real good. You know, if this Chantry thing doesn’t work out, I could use someone people don’t notice.”

The boy flushed. “I need to… they’ll miss me if I don’t—”

Varric shooed him toward the door. “Go on, Nipper. Thanks for the meal.”

The boy stumbled back into the hall and the guard slammed his door shut. Varric lifted the serving dome to find another tepid stew, a slice of soggy bread floating morosely in it. He sighed and lifted the first bland spoonful to his lips and tried to remember the taste of chilled oysters in the sunshine.


	8. Bal-chatri, Bownet, and Jess

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Major character death
> 
> Yeah, it's _that_ part of the story. I'm so sorry.

He held off the inevitable as long as he could. Shit, he even spun a perfectly respectable whodunnit before lunch, complete with a nighttime raid in a Hightown estate, a big bad with a twist, and a templar murdered because he knew too much. Alas, poor Emeric, he really deserved better. 

His interrogator humored him until the bells struck noon. The bells struck noon, though, and what passed for humor vanished. She demanded he stop spinning and get to the point. So many points, Seeker, so little patience. He got to a point, one that would satisfy his captive audience. 

If her eyes grew bright at the end of his tale, and if her bottom lip trembled, it was of no concern to him. She released him to his little room with the bar on the wrong side of the door before the sun had even considered setting. It wasn’t a reward. Telling the story in chains had been unpleasant. Reliving it alone was worse.

…

He’d never seen Hawke fight so frantic, so dirty. She scythed through shades and risen corpses in a grim echo of the autumn harvest. Several times he was nearly overwhelmed, only to have her appear at his back and tear his assailants to ragged bits of smoking ichor and splintered bone. Those were the worst times. Those were the times he could hear her breathing through her teeth, snarling like a feral dog. For only the second time since they met, she didn’t stop at any of the chests, didn’t rifle a single body. She hadn’t stopped at all since the white lilies showed up on her desk.

Aveline had nearly broken his door down when Hawke went to find the killer with only her dog and a sleazy Orlesian nobleman for company. She protected her now with a clenched jaw and worried eyes as Hawke threw herself into the thick of battle time and again, as she downed all manner of potions with no regard for the price she’d pay later. Varric ran a finger over the precious vials of ruxlim between shots and sent up a small prayer he wouldn't need them. He didn't think Hawke had double dipped again after he nearly lost her in the Deep Roads, but it never hurt to be prepared. 

Blondie did his best to heal and shield her from the worst of it, but his mana pool could only take so much abuse. Varric reloaded on the run, never fast enough, never there at the start of each new skirmish. Sweat trickled down his chest and soaked into his sash as he took another sheltered position looking down on the next chamber, waiting for the fresh wave of mindless soldiers the blood mage sent against them.

At last a robed man sweated freely in a stifling room, the first living thing they'd met since dropping into the caves. Why was it always blighted caves? He watched them descend while a woman slumped in a rickety chair behind him, her shoulders uneven, her neck bent. There was no hint of nobility in her posture, none of Leandra’s iron pride. Hope flared. This couldn’t be Hawke’s mother. He studied the wedding dress she wore as it trailed in the tacky soil. The ivory lace at the hem had been lavish, but now was ragged and moth eaten. Leandra had never owned anything like it. She’d never had a noble wedding. The villain talked too much, as villains do. The shifty nobleman moved to double cross them, as shifty noblemen often did. Killing him felt like nothing at all.

The villain watched his former student fall with his weird colorless eyes, then lifted them to slide over his audience, unfocused and queasy. "No matter. My work is eternal. My name, legend. Cower before me you fleeting, you waning, you children smelling of milk, for I have touched the face of the Maker, and lived!" 

Hawke was still through it all, maybe unbelieving, maybe even hopeful, her eyes fixed on silver hair below a stained veil as the man raved, until the woman stood. The body took halting steps, disjointed, an ill-made puppet with half its strings. She turned to behold them. Clouded eyes twitched in Leandra’s beautiful, grey fleshed face. Livid red lines slashed dead skin where the bodies had been joined with a crude stitch. A perfume of sickly sweet rot nearly overwhelmed him. He tore his eyes from the desecrated corpse and dragged them to Hawke’s beloved form.

He watched her break. It wasn’t obvious, just a slackening of jaw, a drooping of shoulders, and in her eyes, an extinguishing of light.

Aveline lowered her sword and charged, but the blood mage drew a shield around himself and called the demons he’d used in binding the women. They fought shades and abominations unending as wails of the possessed echoed on the hard stone walls and the hiss and stink of Hawke’s grenades filled the spaces between. 

When the man called Quentin summoned Leandra’s demon, Hawke berserked. Cords stood out on her neck as she loosed a deafening scream. She shattered the three abominations surrounding Blondie in a vicious blitz and leapt into the air, daggers streaming blood. The demon turned just in time to have one of its enormous tits ripped from its chest. The other dagger sunk deep into its neck with all of Hawke’s momentum behind it, and purple skin split to show dark, oozing red. It reached up to pry Hawke from its back. The blackened, claw-tipped hands tore through her leather armor like it was silk.

Hawke snarled and leapt away with fresh blood dripping down her side. She circled the demon, all others forgotten. It watched her as mortal wounds sagged from its immortal consciousness. Varric fixed his bayonet to engage a pair of shades that had exploited his inattention, and across the room Aveline cleared a circle around Hawke. Blondie was leaning heavily on his staff off to the side. With his mana and body exhausted, there was little he could do but stay out of the way. 

The demon opened its mouth to speak. Hawke’s lips twisted and she sent a dagger into its throat. A breath later she was on top of it again, screaming as she wrenched the curved blade away and plunged it into the demon’s eye, twisting as it fell. The demon's brow split with a sickening crack, and it was still. Hawke wiped fell ooze from her mouth as she lifted her blank killer’s gaze to the blood mage. The man was tapped out, crumpling on himself from mana exhaustion. Three rapid fire bolts pierced his chest, and the mage fell to his knees. Hawke walked over to him, one heavy foot in front of the other, until her toes brushed his filthy robes. She kicked him flat onto his back and looked into the silty shallows of his eyes.

"Touch this, you son of a bitch."

Hawke lunged forward and crushed his skull under her boot. The snap of bone was loud in the silence. She turned to her mother.

The patchwork abomination slouched toward them. It spoke in Leandra’s voice. Hawke caught it and they collapsed together as it faded with its master’s death. There was enough left of Leandra to remember the family that had gone before her, and to worry about the daughters she was leaving behind. Mace rested her bloody jowls on the white dress, leaving dark red petals to unfurl in the yellowed embroidery. Varric stepped behind Hawke and rested a hand on her shoulder. Leandra’s veiled eyes drifted up to him. He heard the echo of her words, _Don’t waste any more time._ He felt her charge him with her little girl's future. He put a hand on his chest in a slight bow, and she floated back to Hawke. 

“I’m so proud of you, my eldest daughter,” she said with her ruined voice. “You were always so strong.” Hawke curled around her mother’s form, and the last of the foul magic that held her slipped away. 

Aveline knelt in a solemn vigil as Anders sang last rites in his thin, tired voice. Varric stood behind Hawke, his hand still on her shoulder. Hawke cradled her mother’s head, stroked her hair, kissed her face, and wet both with tears. Varric didn’t notice when Aveline left, but when she returned with guardsmen bearing a litter, he knelt to take Hawke’s face in his hands. She looked through him, a hundred leagues away, but allowed her mother to be lifted onto the litter, and allowed him to raise her to her feet, and allowed Anders to heal her wounds so she could walk out of that accursed hovel with her hand buried in Mace’s dark fur. It was morning. A pair of guards escorted them to Anders’ clinic. Varric thanked them at the door, and they were alone. He eased her down on one of the cots and entered her estate from the nearby cellar door.

He asked Orana to draw a bath, then he sent for a runner. Bodahn and Sandal left for the Guild on his suggestion, happy to hawk enchantments in the square. Not long after, Merrill came from the Viscount’s garden for Orana with promises of elvhen hospitality in the alienage. He returned to the clinic for Hawke. She hadn’t moved.

Her hand was limp as he led her through the cellar. At the stairs, he pressed her down onto the lowest step and removed her filthy boots, pausing to wipe blood, brains, and ichor from his hands. He removed her armor with the same care, then hung his duster on a barrel and kicked off his boots. She followed him remotely when he took her hand, and he shuddered with involuntary disgust. Her gait was clumsy from the half healed wounds and her eyes were dead and distant, far too much like the puppet they had just left.

He steeled himself and continued undressing her when they reached the bathing room. The air was heavy with lilac scented steam, which he inhaled greedily as he stripped the torn and stained cloth from her torn and stained body. Anders had done what he could, but her limbs were a lacework of small cuts, and angry bruises bloomed at her ribs and thighs. He guided her into the bath. She stepped in and sat, quiet, obedient.

“Don’t you leave me too, Hawke,” he whispered.

If she heard, she made no sign.

He left her to soak and removed his own soiled, stinking clothing. With a rough cloth and several basins of warm water, he scrubbed the taint of the day from his skin as best he could. He wrung the cloth too tightly, chafing his hands and nearly ripping it in his need to feel something that wasn’t revulsion or dread. By the time he drained the last basin, Hawke’s bath had gone tepid. He cursed and fetched the second pot Orana had left over the kitchen fire.

When he returned Hawke was standing before the hazy mirror, dripping water on the flagstone and shivering. He emptied the bath and refilled it, and the lilac steam filled his lungs once more to cut through the stench that clung to them. Again he led her to the bath, and again she folded herself into the hot water. This time he bathed her. He started at her neck, gently teasing the ground in dirt from her wounds, then used a firmer touch where sweat and ichor had mixed to leave a stain. He raised her arms, massaging the muscles as he swept the cloth down. He lifted each finger and used a short blade to scrape filth from below her nails. 

Sweat prickled his bare skin. His loose hair moved in time with his work, a short, vigorous sway when he scrubbed at a patch of filth on her knee, long, languid waves as he rinsed soap from her thighs. He lost himself in the motions, the passage of time marked only by the gradual darkening of the water.

For one horrible moment he flicked back through time to another bath, a different woman, a different kind of quiet. It was his mother in the bath then, toward the end as she wasted away from drink. She couldn’t do much, couldn’t feed herself, couldn’t wash herself, but she still loved his stories. He would retell the old folktales at dinner to get her to eat, recite poetry while he bathed her so the measured rhymes soothed her unpredictable moods, and at night, he wove his own story just for her until she fell asleep. He finished it the night she died and burned it, page by page, at her vigil.

He was startled out of his unwelcome memory when Hawke grasped his wrist. He’d stopped moving, and though her eyes were still unfocused, her hand guided him back to his work. A final flood of clean water cascaded over her skin, and he moved to her hair. Her bloodshot eyes closed as he worked the filth from her scalp, and the light scent of lilac wafted up in teasing breaths. He took her hand when she was clean and she rose dripping from the dark water to step onto the rug. 

She shifted to look at him, actually present for the first time since they parted ways at Nakita’s safe house two days before. Shit. That had been a bad day too, Alessa gone in the night, two of his best scrappers all but liquefied by some perverted magic, and Nakita herself gone to ground. He met Hawke’s eyes, and filed that particular headache away for later. 

She took him in, his loose, wet hair, his broad shoulders, the shelf of muscle above his hips. Her eyes rested lower for a moment. It wasn’t the first time they’d been nude together, not even the fiftieth, but it was the first time he felt naked before her. It was the first time he’d felt naked in years. Weird.

The moment of lucidity passed and she fell back into her thousand league stare. She allowed herself to be dried and robed and led to her chambers, and she allowed him to lay her down on the bed, and when he’d pulled his spare tunic over his head, she allowed him to lie beside her. The bed sank under his weight. She rolled away to give him her back. He slid his fingers over her shoulder. After a moment, she leaned into his touch. For the rest of that day he laid beside her, his hand on her back, sometimes massaging the tight muscles, sometimes tracing letters with a feather touch, sometimes pressing his palm full against her, but never, never leaving her side.

Her servants returned at the end of the day, solemn now that they’d heard. Orana prepared her father’s soup, and she took Varric gentle rejection and Hawke’s mute stare in stride. She promised to make it again tomorrow, and the next day, and so on until they were ready. Bodahn got rid of the lilies.

The second day passed much as the first, though she would occasionally reach back to lace her fingers with his, and he would occasionally lead her to the privy, as she didn’t seem inclined to rouse herself for even that. Mace had been bathed by then, and she curled below him at the foot of their bed. By the third morning he’d coaxed some food into her, a simple sweetened oat mash, a cup of tea with cream, and she’d performed a stilted toilet on her own, a splash of water on her face, an apathetic drawing of brush though tangled hair. He took it as progress, and felt he could leave her to check up on Reitt and Red. They were just around the corner. It took him hardly any time at all. 

He came back to chaos.

Noble estates were designed for privacy everywhere, but Kirkwall’s estates took privacy to a whole new level. Back in the bad old days, keeping the neighbors awake with the noise of one’s blood sacrifices was considered poor manners. As a result, the structures were designed to hold nearly every sound inside. For modern nobles this was seen as a challenge. No one could claim a truly successful ball until the uninvited neighbors were well disturbed. Doors were propped open, bards were instructed to play out windows, and Varric was on a first name basis with a good number of actors who made a living inventing noisy quarrels and drunken gossip outside the walls while the party raged mutely on within them.

All of which was to say, he had no idea anything was amiss until he stepped up to the heavy door. A low thump greeted him as he grasped the handle, far off and muffled. His brow knitted and he turned, unable to pinpoint where the sound had come from. Another thump, louder, whipped his head back to Hawke’s entry. He tore the door open and left it gaping.

The sound of splintering wood crashed over him as he sprinted through the foyer. It was followed by the sound of a throat tearing itself apart. He moved as if through treacle, too slow as another crash reverberated through the halls. Hawke screamed again, rage and desolation, and he ran all but blind to make it stop.

He took the stairs two at a time and caught the door frame to keep from impaling himself on the wreckage of her chamber. She was hunched over her wardrobe, her hands ragged and bleeding and her face horribly, horribly blank. She dragged those vacant eyes up to meet his. Breath caught in his chest and he choked on it. She slumped to her knees and closed her eyes. Varric surveyed the damage when he could breathe again. Mace cowered in the corner and the wardrobe lay in shards, the dresses it had held scattered in gauzy, brightly colored scraps that still fluttered with the violence in the air. Her cracked bedposts leaned dangerously in all directions, and there were feathers in her hair from the gutted mattress where the remains of the heavy canopy trailed on balled up sheets. 

He returned to her, the dozen and more shallow cuts, the shaking setting in at her shoulders. She seemed to melt as he watched. He picked his way across the room just in time to catch her. A sob punched from her throat as her hands clawed at his tunic. He took them in his and they clenched so hard he was sure they both would break. Breath hissed through his teeth. She loosed her grip with a ragged wail and pushed her face into his shoulder, and she came undone. 

She broke. She broke and he held her. She lashed out and he deflected the strikes because they weren’t meant for him. She sagged against him and he made of himself a pier for her crumbling foundation. She broke. He held her.

The room darkened with the day. He lost all feeling in his legs and knew hers must be as numb, but neither moved. A delicate relief had spun the most fragile of webs around them in the intervening hours, and the slightest shift would tear it to nothingness. He blinked against the gloom, flashes of red when he squeezed his eyes shut. Hawke drew a shuddering breath. The whisper of holiness in the air gave way to her grief. He held her.

“I killed her. Varric I—”

Varric grasped her shoulders and drew back to look on her battered face. 

“No, no. None of this is your fault. You worked harder than anyone to bring that monster down.”

“I pressured him, made him desperate. I did this to her. Just like the rest of them—” 

A rough hiccup cut her off. Varric shook his head, jaw clenched as he watched her crash against martyrdom’s rocky shore, in thrall to its siren song. Maferath’s balls, he wanted to shake her. Instead, he slid his fingers to cup the base of her thick skull and stroked her cheek with all the gentleness as he could muster.

“Did you tell your brother to attack an ogre barehanded? Did you frogmarch your sister to the Deep Roads, or push her from safety into the wraith’s fury?” She picked at splinters and flaps of cut skin. He pried her hands apart before she could do more damage to herself. “Everything you have done since I’ve known you, and everything I’ve heard from before, it has always been for your family.” She huffed. “You’re a protector, Hawke, I’ve lost count of the times you’ve put yourself in harm’s way—”

“And what have I to show for it?” she cried. “Couldn’t protect my own family, my own mother!” Hawke pulled her hands away and balled them into fists. Varric kept a weather eye on them. “It’s my fault they’re dead.”

“Shh, no, no.” He sat back, wincing as his legs complained. “She wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

She scoffed. “You don’t know my mother.”

Her words punched him in the gut. He did know Leandra. He knew her aloof public facade and the warmth that simmered just below. He knew her refined tastes and her ferocious love for her children, both those she had borne and those Hawke had dragged in. Shit, he even knew her tells after years of losing an embarrassing amount of coin to her. He took a calculated risk and brushed Hawke’s fists down to lift her chin, and he looked straight into her red, watery eyes.

“I did know your mother,” he said. His voice was rough, and Hawke blinked at the rawness of it. He swallowed the lump in his throat. “She wouldn’t spend her dying breath on a lie.”

Hawke’s face crumpled and was buried once more into his shoulder. She was quiet this time, low, shuddering sobs that drew on as her fingers clawed at him, his arms, his back. He wrapped her frantic strength in his solidity. He let her weep.

Another night bell rang out over Kirkwall. Mace had crept up to them at some point and leaned her massive weight against Hawke, further steadying her. Finally Hawke pushed away from him and wiped at her eyes with one impatient hand as she held onto the dog with the other. She tried to stand, wobbled a bit, and straightened. Varric got painfully to his feet as well, swearing softly as he shook the pins and needles from his legs. Hawke hugged herself and surveyed the damage. Varric shuffled a splintered corner of something toward the wall with his boot.

“Fuck,” she said flatly.

“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” he agreed.

She met his eyes. “Guess we’re both orphans now.”

He rubbed his jaw. “Aveline might adopt us, if we ask her real nice.”

Her mouth twisted in a sort of horrified amusement. “She does have a reassuring way of being fondly disappointed in me,” she said.

Varric closed the space between them. Her hands went to his shoulders. His went to her waist. His thumbs stroked the shifting muscle there, the hard flare of her hips.

“You have me, Hawke. No fine print, no hidden clauses, no more blighted secrets. I wanted to tell you at luncheon the other day, but…”

“Nakita. DuPuis.” Hawke nodded. “I found the inscription.”

His fingers tightened on her. “Then you know.” She nodded again with a sniffle. He exhaled. “Talk about bad timing.”

A sad grin flicked across her lips. She leaned down to press them on his and he tasted salt and bad sleep, a quiver of weakness, a frustrated recovery. She tilted her head to deepen it but he broke away. She wouldn’t use him as he’d used her.

“Think you can eat tonight?” he asked.

She frowned at him, reading into his reluctance, his redirection. “I’m not sure, honestly. Not hungry now… but sit me at a table?” She offered him a wan smile, “Instinct could take over.”

He shifted to her side, sliding his arm to the small of her back. “That’s my girl. Let’s see what Orana’s been up to.”

The fourth day saw them moving about the estate, protected from the sweltering heat as they cleaned the debris from Hawke’s chamber and tended to their neglected weapons. They moved to one of the guest rooms until a new bed could be built and avoided talking about their new state of affairs, preferring instead the mundane task of moving on. Halfway through supper, Hawke turned to Leandra’s chair. They all watched helplessly when she lowered her head to one hand as the other curled around the emptiness where her mother’s place setting should have been. He excused them from the table to guide her past her chambers to the guest room. He hummed his mother’s favorite lullaby and stroked her hair until she quieted. 

On the fifth day, they had the funeral.

Aveline had made the arrangements. The body on the pyre was fully clothed, satin gloves to hide the decay of her fingers, a delicate scarf obscuring the blackened line at her throat. Hawke leaned heavily on him, and sweat rolled down his back as the black beads on her charcoal dress dug painfully into his neck. Mace sat at her other side, solid and stoic, her dark brindle coat shining from Orana’s care, a spray of small white flowers around her neck. A children’s choir sang the chant of light as sisters lit the kindling with long torches. Their high, pure voices rose as the fire’s fierce heat shimmered the air and sharp cedar and myrrh smoke filled his lungs. He wasn’t one for religion, but even standing next to a pyre in the blasted midday sun, he couldn’t deny its effect. 

The crowd thinned when the choir left, their respects paid and their prayers murmured. Hawke, Varric, and Mace stayed until the fire guttered. The first cool breeze in a week blew through Kirkwall as they watched the dying flames. Hawke put her face into it and breathed deeply.

“She would have liked that,” Hawke said.

Varric nodded, but before he could reply a bolt of lightning split the sky over them. They ducked when thunder crashed in its wake, reaching for weapons that weren’t there as the heavy clouds lashed them with the first fat drops. Soon torrential rain doused the last embers of Leandra’s pyre with a positively draconic hiss, and Hawke shrieked in offense as her hat’s brim gave way for fresh rainwater to sluice down the front of her dress. Varric pulled his collar up even as he resigned himself to a good soaking. It beat the snot out of the stifling heat of the last few days.

He offered his arm and they returned to the estate hunched against the storm’s wild embrace. Varric drew another bath when they arrived, smoky and soaking wet. She pulled him in with her. They washed each other, brimming with sudden joy and surprise at being alive. He slid the cloth over her hard shoulders and she answered with fingers at the nape of his neck that slid down and pressed into the thick muscle of his back. She wrapped her legs around his waist and drew him close enough to kiss, unconcerned with the water that spilled to the floor. She studied him instead, and he wondered what she saw. 

“Under law and rite, huh?” She wrinkled her nose in amusement.

Sparrows picked up a maddened whirl within his chest. So, they were going to talk about this. His eyes slid from her gaze to rest on something less penetrating. 

“I can draw the paperwork up tomorrow,” he said, as casually as he dared.

Hawke set her sights deeper. “What about… her?”

He closed his eyes, retreating to the depths behind his lids to conjure that night. “Bianca. I wrote a letter after our morning on the bay, and the crazy woman damn near sunk her own ship to see for herself.” He steeled himself to meet her eyes. Gentle concern greeted him. “It was the night we tried to set Aveline up. She called you magnificent.”

Hawke snorted. “She called me, the woman stealing her lover, magnificent? 

More than that. “She really did.” He shifted to bring Hawke closer. “ And you didn’t steal me. You’re here, and she isn’t. More than that though... you're _here_ in ways she never was. Ways she never could be” Hawke tilted her head, understanding most but wanting more anyway. He stroked her hip beneath the water. “I’ll always love her,” he confessed, softening his words with a small shake of his head when she frowned, “but not as a lover. There are precious few people I can trust with both my purse and my neck. She’s one of them.”

Hawke rested her forehead on his. “She’s family.” He nodded against her. “Perhaps she’ll be mine too, in time,” she hummed, “it’s not every day someone calls me magnificent.”

“Not yet,” he said. Hawke’s lips twisted in a moue that was kissing cousins to a grimace. Varric swept his hands up her sides, cataloging every scar. “I made my choice, beautiful. I’ll make it again, and again, and as many times as it takes for you to believe me.”

Hawke leaned back and relaxed into that lopsided grin. A pleasant shiver trilled down his spine as his hands fell back to her hips, and he returned her grin for all it felt like they were treading on the thinnest of ice.

“I’ll try not to abuse my newfound power,” she said lightly. She lifted a hand to inspect her fingertips. “Mm, I’m all pruney, and I hear a cocktail calling my name.”

With that she rose from the tub, nearly as sleek and whole as she’d ever been. They dried themselves and retired to her guest room where she curled up against his side, cocktail forgotten, her head on his shoulder, his arm around her back. Her breathing slowed in minutes, and she slept. He trailed his fingers on her waist as the storm raged, his mind churning with new thoughts.

Hawke was going to be okay. He’d seen her through the worst of it. He knew it would come back, knew that there would be times she was perfectly fine, and there would be others when it would all rush back raw like it had just happened. He knew, because he’d been there. Hawke would be fine.

A chill breath of wind raised gooseflesh on his arms as he wiped his eyes and chuffed a quiet laugh. The weight of it all had lessened, but a twist in his chest remained. He breathed through it, grateful for the storm’s cool, rain-sharp air.

Hawke rolled off him to settle in on her side of the bed. He watched her go, and a small piece of him went with her. That was familiar too in a way, but when Bianca took pieces of him, it had hurt. He felt their absence, counted the holes, and hoarded the ache they left. What Hawke took went with a sigh, a kiss, and a promise. It felt good. Better than good, it felt right. Leandra’s death weighed on him, but now, he thought he could carry it. 

He looked over at Hawke again, nearly innocent in the soft repose of untroubled sleep. He trusted her with his purse, his neck, and something else besides, something with feathers. He let himself sink into the stiff mattress, and sleep came for him as swiftly as it had for her. 

——

Hawke,

I love you. 

I love you twice as much as I thought possible, even if it is half as well as you deserve. Day after day when I look to my side there you are, improbable and inexplicably within reach. You’ve forgiven my faults, soothed my hurts, and watched my back. You’re a gift I never looked for and could never match, and it pains me that all I have to offer in return is my battered self. Which I do. All that I am, under law and rite, if you’ll have me.

Don’t let it go to your head.

Varric

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading, my loves. I've heard from some of you, and others have been quiet. I hope you're all safe and sound, and I hope you're finding a way through all of this, and I promise the next chapter will be lighter, though I can't promise when I'll post it. 
> 
> Given, I mean, all the shit that's going on, I'm homeschooling my kids again this year. Y'all know what that means! Basically zero time for writing. Womp.


	9. Proscription

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know anymore. Here, have a short update that's barely edited because if I don't do this now I may forget how to write these two idiots completely. Also I love you and I hope you're doing okay. Yes, you.

The worst thing about losing someone you loved, other than losing them in the first place, was the advice. Loads of advice. Advice from all comers and all corners, simpering advice, condescending advice, plain old bad advice, and his least favorite, advice from people who have been there.

“Hm. Been there. Rough go alright, but it gets better,” followed by a clap on the shoulder, a knowing tilt to the eyes.

Varric wanted to scream. 

He didn’t, but he wanted to.

Hawke flicked a smile to the small knot of ragged Fereldens who’d stopped them in the square and dropped her shoulder to let the presumptuous hand slide away. The man stepped back, ducking his head as he remembered himself, and as Varric caught him in a hard glare that softened only with several paces between them. Varric had spent half the day chasing his tail on the coast, and all the while he’d built her up so far he was certain he’d strained something. Now some blighty duster was poised to bring it all crashing down again. Not on his watch.

“Here,” he flipped a shiny silver to the huddled family. “Toast her memory, and honor her charity.”

The wife caught it and dropped him a curtsy. “As he wishes,” she said, and the coin disappeared into her skirts as the children tore around her in excitement. 

Hawke bumped him with her hip. He glanced up with a careful twinkle in his eye.

“Mother wasn’t all that charitable,” she said, light amusement in her voice.

He shivered his shoulders. “Speaking ill of the dead? What next, dancing naked under the full moon? Casting a hex of tongues on the Viscount?”

She shrugged and turned away. “I see you, Varric.”

He started a list of all the things that could mean as he watched her go, but an invisible tether snapped between them after only a moment, so he clenched his teeth against the complaint of his legs and trotted after her. He’d definitely strained something.

The Hanged Man’s warm stink settled around him, a noisy welcome as he followed Hawke through the heavy door. She leapt on the nearest table to cheers with a grin on her face and a bobble at her heels, though the latter was quick enough that only the closest study would have seen it. He glanced around to see if he should be concerned, and relaxed. They were all drunks here. He tugged at the knife in Hawke’s boot before the bobble could work itself into a break. She put her hand squarely on his head to step down, giving an extra push of her fingers to wreck his hair completely when she released him. He pulled it from the thong with a grumble.

“Easy on the goods, Hawke. This,” —he gestured to himself— “doesn’t come cheap.”

She flexed the offending hand with a twist of her lips that was nearly apologetic, but ‘Bela called from a table near the back and she turned to join her with Mace close at her heels. Varric shoved his hands into his pockets and followed. At the last moment, though, he heard a sharp bark of laughter. It was too loud, too raw, too close to the sound she’d made in the wreckage of her chambers. Hawke turned to look for him. He shook his head.

“I’ll catch up,” he said, and he jogged up the stairs to his rooms with the last of his strength.

He had no intention of catching up. This was a path he’d taken once too many times already, and he was tired. She had friends other than him. They could manage for a while. He closed the door without locking it and sat heavily at the table to page through his endless stream of correspondence, hoping to lose himself for a while in the minutiae of Kirkwall’s criminal element, most of it dull. After a while he opened an envelope that stank of fish, the docks. There was a power vacuum now that the Dog Lords were busted up, bodies in the streets every morning as rival outfits fought over corners. He set the report down and rubbed his temples, and his door burst open.

“You’ll never catch us at this rate,” Hawke brayed, swaying already from drink and exhaustion. She locked the door and let herself fall into her chair as Mace flopped onto his rug. “Isabela and Fenris are—” she made a lewd gesture and a lewder face.

Varric raised a brow. “And have been for a while.”

“I don’t mean in general,” Hawke said with a snort, “I mean now.”

“What, in the bar? I suppose I’m not surprised at ‘Bela, but—”

Hawke threw the nearest thing at hand at him. Her aim was atrocious, but he managed to catch the coin purse anyway. He set it back on the table.

“Impossible dwarf. They went to her room here.”

Varric’s humor sharpened to a killing edge. “What, and didn’t invite you along?”

Hawke hummed. “I may have said I’d get the next round and disappeared on them instead.”

Of course. Hawke would have been the one to do the leaving, determined as she was to wear that brave face. She might have everyone else fooled, but not him. He set his knuckles on the table and pushed up.

“It’s late,” he said, crossing his arms and leaning on the table in front of her, “and you were ready to keel over the moment we got here.”

She lolled her head up to meet his eyes. She wasn’t half as crocked as she played, but he could almost smell the burning edges of her façade. She blinked slowly at him, fire in those green eyes, fire that didn’t reach the dark circles below them. He didn’t move. She broke first, dropping her stare to mumble into her folded hands.

“Hm? I didn’t catch that,” Varric said from above her.

She looked up from under her brows. “I said,” icy, “that its getting harder to know the difference.”

“Between?”

She shrugged. “Take your pick. Who’s right? What’s right? Shit…” she looked down. “Do you ever wish it would all just, fall into the sea?”

Varric tilted his head. “Sounds like someone missed their bedtime.”

Hawke tossed a rude gesture toward him. He caught her hand to fold it in his. She let her arm hang, and the dead weight of it chilled him. He slid his other hand down to her elbow and tugged. She stood reluctantly.

“I am tired,” she said, leaning a bit too hard on the _am._

He led her to the bedroom. Together they stripped their sand-crusted clothing and washed the worst of the day from their skin, and when they laid on the red coverlet at last, she propped herself up on her elbow to study him. He mirrored her pose and did the same.

“’Bela’s in trouble,” she said.

“She’s a big girl.”

“It’s not the usual trouble. Have you ever seen her scared?”

“Rivaini? Scared?” The idea was uncomfortable.

“How long does she usually stay in Kirkwall?”

Varric considered that. While he’d enjoyed her extended stay, he had to admit it raised some concerns he hadn’t examined too closely. 

“Well, she did lose her ship getting here. The Favor's a trim little boat, but she needs something a mite bigger if she wants to fly Raiders colors.”

“Half this city is in the Raiders’ pocket. If a ship was all she needed, she’d have left on the first high tide.” Hawke sunk down to lie on her back. “She lost something here,” she paused, and then she scoffed, “something worth dying for.”

_Tell me, Lucky, is this worth dying for?_

Varric chewed the inside of his cheek. “What would ‘Bela think was worth dying for?”

Hawke turned to him with a scowl. “How long have you been friends? Don’t you know her at all?” Varric raised his brows and his shoulders in an affronted shrug. Hawke returned to the ceiling. “Freedom. She isn’t free here, Varric, and it’s eating her alive.”

His neck ached. With a sigh he sank down onto the bed as well and reached for Hawke. She slid her hand into his, fingers lacing together. He stroked the back of her hand with his thumb.

“I hate how much easier it is to solve other people’s problems,” she said softly.

He rolled to face her. She did the same. He squeezed her fingers in his trapped hand and ran the other through her soft, dark hair, and the fire crackled in his hearth, and the faint scent of lilacs rode over the salt and sweat of the day. Her eyes were troubled. He imagined his were, too.

“That’s distance for you,” he said, and kissed the corners of her lips as they threatened to turn down.


End file.
